


Walking A Tightrope

by NightOwl14



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Child Death, Drug Use, Eating Disorders, F/M, M/M, Prostitution, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:19:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 57
Words: 80,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1397812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightOwl14/pseuds/NightOwl14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen Ackles was pulled into an ocean of drugs and prostitution by a mother who was already drowning in it.<br/>Jared Padalecki started sticking his fingers down his throat in response to a world that insisted anyone who wasn't rail-thin was ugly.<br/>They both meet under terrible circumstances and find themselves doing their best to put the broken pieces of each other back together again. But things like that are easier said than done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first real-world fic I've ever written--though it is an AU. I was going to use it for a Bigbang (I was going to do that with my other story 'The Double' as well) but I changed my mind. I'm just not patient enough.
> 
> Anyway, all comments and kudos are appreciated. Like seriously, writing is ten times more fun when you can see people responding to your story. So please let me know what you think.
> 
> (And for anyone who cares, the quote at the start of each chapter is from Shane Koyczan. He is a slam poet and a god and I highly recommend you look him up because some of his poems--for instance, to this day--are life changing.

“The only person who lets me down more than God is you.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_It’s something like walking a tightrope, giving up, and then jumping off. And you’re falling and falling and waiting for the ground to rise up and meet you. And thunder to crackle and the world to flash bright white and then for there to be nothing._

_But that’s not what happens._

_Instead the falling never ends. Black smoky arms never rise up, wrap themselves around you and carry you to someplace better, someplace safe._

_And soon you stop caring. You don’t want to stop falling. Sure it’s selfish but its also warm and free and dizzy in the greatest possible way._

***

I was thirteen the first time.

My mom’s pimp had an alligator smile and a needle in his hand. The clear liquid sloshing around inside of it as he gestured with his hands.

I wasn’t listening to him. Instead I was focused on the shiny clear tip of the needle, and how much it would hurt if he were to put it in my arm. Every time one of his wild gestures brought the sharp object anywhere close to me I flinched.

My mom let out a laugh, throwing her head back so that her dyed blonde hair whipped backwards as well. “It’s just like when you go to the doctors, Jense. Its good for you, baby. I promise.”

“Damn straight it is,” Jeffrey confirmed, stroking his scruffy face. “Come on kid, we need the cash, and this’ll make it hurt less, hand to God.” And he raised the hand that was holding the needle, turning his head while he did so and thinking I couldn’t see him roll his eyes.

I still didn’t like the idea of the needle in my skin. Maybe it was just like at the doctor’s, but I remembered disliking it then too, though I hadn’t been to a doctor’s office, for any reason, in years.

Shaking my head, I scooted backwards on the hotel room bed. I wanted to start screaming and crying, to throw a temper tantrum like when I was little, before dad died, when mom would pick me up and rock me while I cried instead of just telling me to shut the fuck up.

This wasn’t how I wanted to be spending my Friday night. My best friend, Chad Lindberg, had just told me about a fun new online game and I’d been itching to try it out, but as soon and I’d gotten off the bus mom had pulled me into the backseat of Jeffrey’s big black car.

When I’d asked where we were going she’d let out another of her signature crackly laughs, slapped her knee, and muttered something about Take-Your-Kid-To-Work-Day.

And I remembered take your kid to work day from second grade when I’d went to the office with dad and made paper airplanes out of all the documents he’d said he hadn’t needed anymore, and then I’d tried to get them to fly into the trashcan from all the way across the room. It had been a good day.

This was not such a good day.

My mom ran one of her long pink fingernails under her eye, scrapping away the black gunk that sweat had smeared. “Don’t be such a baby, Jensen, you’re fourteen!”

I actually didn’t turn fourteen for another nine months but I somehow knew this wasn’t the time for such a correction.

A knock on the door echoed through the room and I sighed a breath of relief. I hoped the arrival of a visitor would distract them from the needle, at least for a little while.

It didn’t though.

            My mom ran to look through the peephole in the door before turning around and saying “Shit.” When my mom first started cursing around me I’d thought it was funny, it made me feel more grown up. I didn’t feel that way anymore.

            “Alright, kid. Game over.” Jeffrey said and before I could ask what he meant he’d secured my arm in his large hand and drove the needle into it.

            The yelp came more from surprise than from any actual pain.

            There was only a drop of blood, which Jeffrey didn’t seem too worried about, because he simply let it drip down my arm are he rose from his seat on the bed.

            “Mom,” I whimpered, hoping for an apology. Maybe a reward of some sort, like getting pizza for dinner, because I was getting sick of canned tomato soup.

            “Don’t start with me right now, Jensen. What Mr. Morgan just gave you ‘s real good It’ll help a whole lot with what’s about to happen. Trust me, I’d know.”

            The last part was practically a giggle and Jeffrey pinned my mom against the door and kissed her hard before muttering, “It’s so fucking hot when you call me that.” His voice seemed father away than it should’ve.

            I felt sort of like I was gonna barf so I laid down, flat on my back and tried to focus on the ceiling because it was all one color and so the fact that it was spinning was easier to ignore and therefore made me less dizzy.

            My mom’s long fingernails swept my fair from my face and she pressed a sticky kiss to my forehead. When had she gotten so close to me? She’d been all the way across the room last I remembered. The sound of a door opening. Then my mom leaned down and whispered, “Good luck, baby.” In my ear.

            I tried to say ‘Thanks mom’, but what came out was more like “Thas maa”. My tongue felt heavy and limp in my mouth and I closed my eyes and drifted up, up, up and away.

            The door closed and then I was alone. At least I thought I was until the bed springs screeched under someone else’s weight. I wanted to sit up and greet them, I meant to, but all I could manage to do was flop one arm lazily.

            “Hush,” a deep voice said, “Go to sleep, baby boy, it’s all alright now.”

            So I did, I closed my eyes and I let the warmth take me away.

            When I woke up my mother and Jeffrey were back in the room. I thought about sitting up but my head was pounding and I felt sore all over. I shifted one of my legs slightly and a jolt of pain was accompanied by a squishing sound.

            I reached the tips of fingers into my jeans and then pulled them out. They were sticky with red.

            “Mommy,” I cried out in panic, I hadn’t used those two extra letters in a long time, but I couldn’t help myself now.

            I looked up to where she was, standing over my bed with a wad of cash in her hand. When I called her name she looked over at me questioningly. I raised my right hand, the one with the blood dripping down my fingers and she gave me a small smile. “Don’t worry about that, Jensen. You’ll be fine in a few days, and it’ll stop hurting so bad after a while. I promise.”

            I thought about her last promise, that the stuff in the needle was putting into my blood was good for me. Obviously it hadn’t been if it had made me bleed and ache so badly.

            There was something else too. A ghost of a memory. And as I looked at the ceiling I could almost recall it. But then I blinked and any recollection of the almost-memory was too far away for me to grasp.

            I opened my mouth to ask how long I’d been asleep when a bout of nausea swept over me like a ghastly green fog and I rolled onto my side and threw up all over the bed.

            My mother laughed and swatted Jeffrey on the shoulder with the hand holding the money.

            That was the first time my mom used my body for money.

            A month and two weeks later was the next.


	2. Chapter 2

“If we spend our lives trying to adjust to something broken we break ourselves in the process.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_It’s something like nothing at first. Like a hard punch to the gut: time stops and noise dies down to tiny whispers curling like wisps of smoke. But you don’t feel anything, not then. Because nothing’s really happened yet. At least, not to you._

_The word ‘gone’ hasn’t quite sunken in yet. The idea that all his sand has filtered through the hourglass isn’t frightening because the sand is still there. Granted, it’s frozen—unable to move for the remainder of time, but you can see it lying at the bottom of the hourglass and you tell yourself that if you just turn it over the sand will keep falling. Right?_

_And then you feel something. That’s when you see all the holes that this loss has ripped open in your life. Tears in the stitches that hold you together. And now your screws are coming loose._

_People aren’t one puzzle piece: they are hundreds. Thousands. And it isn’t just one empty space that they leave inside of you when they go. It’s millions._

***

            I was thirteen the first time.

            It was the middle of a Wednesday and the Gym teacher had let us go early because some of the girls had started complaining about not having enough time to change.

So us boys were done changing well before the bell and we huddled together near the gym’s exit talking about the 8th grade dance and who were we going to ask.

“How about you, JT?”

I hadn’t been paying very close attention to the conversation so I wasn’t sure who’d asked and my answer was, as a result, not as formulated as it should’ve been.

“I, uh, maybe Sandy.”

“Sandra McCoy?” The same voice asked and it was, at that point, that I realized the voice belonged to Richard.

I nodded jerkily.

There wasn’t a chorus of laughter and nobody pointed. In fact, all of the snickers and the muttered ‘As if’s’ wouldn’t have been heard by me if they hadn’t all happened at once.

I think that Richard could tell from the look on my face that I had overheard. Maybe they all could. But none of them made any move to apologize and after a few seconds, Richard turned away.

I brought my hand to my chest and then moved it downward. I could feel the prominent bulge in my stomach and I wished it were small enough that sucking in would make it disappear.

That’s what they were all speaking. The kind of unspoken truth. Nobody said it but everybody knew. They knew it as certainly as they knew that Richard Speight Jr. was popular and Sandra McCoy was hot.

Jared Padalecki was a fatty.

A fatty who was on the debate team and had already mastered geometry at the age of thirteen. He was most definitely not the kind of guy any girl would agree to go to a dance with, let alone a cheerleader.

I turned my eyes toward the clock, so as to avoid looking at them, and seeing them when they looked at me.

A few seconds later the clock ticked and both hands were on the twelve and class was over. Except that the bell didn’t ring and the halls didn’t flood. Instead, the loudspeaker clicked on and a surprised hush fell over the room. Even the Gym teacher, who had been throwing the basketball into the hoop from the foul line, seemed caught off-guard and he made no move to retrieve the ball as it swished through the hoop and bounced on the shiny hard gym floor. 

Just seconds after the familiar clicking noise, a voice filled the school halls.

“This is your principal, Mrs. Palicki. Will all eighth grade students please make their way to the auditorium for an assembly? Again, Will all eighth grade students please make their way to the auditorium for an assembly? Seventh and Sixth grade students will follow their regular class schedule. Thank you.”

The speaker clicked off. The doors open and as the students filtered out into the hallway the murmurs began. So many voices going all at once:

 

“But I have lunch next period. This is so fucking unfair.”

“You think you got screwed over? I had English with Mrs. Sampson next and Gabe Tigerman said she’s wearing a skirt so short you can totally see her ass.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Whatever, Alona. Like you don’t spend all of Gym class making eyes at Mr. Cohen and practically fanning yourself.”

“You’re a dick!”

 

“So what do you think happened? Why are they calling a surprise assembly?”

“I don’t know, bomb threat?”

“No way, they’d like, evacuate us, or something.”

“Well, I don’t know, you come up with something!”

“I bet it’s about that list Richard made in the bathroom. Top-Ten-Hottest-Girls-In-Graystone-Middle-School or something.”

“Really? Who’s on it?”

 

“Should we go put our stuff in our lockers first?”

“You should. Your gym clothes reek, man.”

“Shut up. But seriously, should I?”

 

I made my way through the crowd, keeping my head down. I had no real interest in the assembly, or why we were going. My longer hair covered my eyes and the snickers and whispers at the idea of me going to the dance with a hot girl still echoed through my head as I waked to the auditorium.

Was I really that ugly? Everyone has flaws, right?  

My hand absentmindedly traced the bump on my stomach as I took my seat in the rows of students. I tried not to notice how the seats next to me stayed empty until all of the others were full.

I didn’t look up at the stage until the sound of fingers tapping a microphone boomed through the speakers and caused me to cover my ears.

That’s when I saw them.

My best, and admittedly only, friend had been absent from school today. He was absent often, and always with a different and vague reason. Renal infection in September: Two weeks out. Food poising a few days before Christmas break: Five days out. Sprained wrist. Great Aunt’s funeral. It was always something.

I’d never thought much of it, except that it was particularly annoying to have no one to sit with in class or at lunch.

But I thought about it then. Looking up at the stage and seeing that both of my best friend’s parents were standing there, eyes puffy. How long had Misha been out this time? Four days. I thought so, at least. I remembered having to do the Periodic Table Project all by myself so he couldn’t have been there Friday of last week.

What was going on?

Principal Palicki leaned in to speak into the microphone. “Students,” she addressed. The murmuring died down but didn’t disappear completely until she called “Students” twice more. The usual chirpiness that her voice held was portentously absent and after a few moments the students seemed to realize that this wasn’t an assembly on the dress code or the chauvinist list that someone had scratched into a stall in the boys bathroom.

A solemn hush fell over the room.

“Thank you,” she said. She looked over at the Collins apologetically, the way a dog owner looks at a guest when the animal just won’t stop barking. “I’d appreciate it if you’d continue to treat both myself and the Collins with respect while we speak. I assure you, this is a very serious matter.”

She paused, as if for affect.

“Misha Collins was a beloved student here at Graystone Middle School.” I would’ve snorted; beloved was not the right adjective. Unless getting called a fag and having you’re glasses stomped on by asshole jocks was the way they expressed said love. Beloved, my ass. I would’ve snorted if my focus hadn’t snagged on the verb ‘was’.

He _was_ a beloved student. Was Misha transferring schools? Did one too many absences lead to an expulsion?

“Misha Collins passed away this weekend from a drug overdose.”

Any defiant whispers among the student body ceased. Mrs. Collins let out a sob before burying her face in her husband’s shoulder. All of the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. Even Principal Palicki looked surprised at her own words.

Misha was dead.

We weren’t even that close, never hung out outside of school, but to hear that someone I’d spoken to just last week was dead floored me. Kids didn’t die. Maybe in newspaper articles or ‘missing’ posters, but not the kids I knew. Not kids like me.

I thought back to the day I’d confessed to him how much I hated being fat. I expected and awkward laugh or a denial. God, how I’d wanted a denial. Instead he said this:

“Don’t worry about it, JT. I, for one, think that you shouldn’t change just because jocks are dicks and girls are vain. But if you really hate being fat, then don’t be. Do something about it.”

Principal Palicki leaned toward the microphone again. “I know that this is quite a shock, and I assure you I was quite shocked myself when I heard the news. But it is true and Misha’s parents have come here today to talk to you about how drugs can hurt not only the addict, but also those around them.”

She stepped back and Mr. Collins walked up to the microphone. But I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t want to know that the renal infection and the food poisoning and whoever-the-fuck’s funeral were excuses Misha used while he was out getting high.

I rose from my seat and dashed into the hallway, keeping my head down and muttering something about needing to use the bathroom. I locked myself in one of the grey, speckled stalls and leaned against the side of it.

A few stalls over a toilet flushed and the only other person in the bathroom exited without washing their hands.

Things felt isolated in the bathroom. Like all the chaos was waiting outside, but it couldn’t get in, not here. No one could bother you in here. No one could tell you that your best friend is dead.

I don’t know why I decided to take the advice of a dead boy. Why the meaning of his words augmented because he wasn’t going to say any more of them. I don’t know when I got the idea, but I’m fairly certain it was after I’d been in the stall for about three minutes and no one else had entered.

I was flipping through memories like files.

 

Whispers from minutes ago: “As if.”

Richard from back in sixth grade: “I don’t want him on the team, coach, he’ll never be able to keep up.”

My mother just last month: “We’re going to need to go shopping sometime soon, these clothes just don’t fit you anymore.”

Misha last year: “Do something about it.”

 

At first I thought I was being a girl. This was the kind of thing girls did, wasn’t it? But if it worked then I didn’t really care.

I took two fingers and stuck them into my mouth. I’d just started to consider the possibility that I didn’t have a gag reflex when the tips of my fingers brushed against a small bump of flesh in the back of my throat and I began to heave into the toilet.

That was the first time I made myself throw up.

Four days later was the next.


	3. Chapter 3

“Sometimes being drug free has less to do with addiction and more to do with sanity.” –Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Freedom is a funny word. Presented with the ability go anywhere I find it so very interesting that people quite generally stay where they were before. Back when they were in chains. Imagine a prison in the dead of night, and all of a sudden, all at once, the locks break and the doors open and they’re all free._

_Would they run?_

_Some would, but I believe most wouldn’t. Not when the outside could be so much more frightening. Not when you have nowhere to go and no idea of who broke the locks. The devil you know is better than the one you don’t._

_I stayed. Not literally but I stayed in a different way. I swam my way through a river just to drown in the angry black waves of the sea._

_***_

Turning eighteen was the greatest thing that could’ve possibly happened to me.

I’d left school at sixteen at my mother’s, or rather Jeffrey’s, insistence. I hadn’t cared all that much. I’d hated school anyway. It was humiliating having to come in, alternating the same two outfits and admitting every time a project was assigned that I didn’t have a computer at home.

The problem was that no high school diploma meant jobs were few and far in between. After I’d run away, two days after my eighteenth birthday with a handful of hundreds I’d stolen out of Jeffrey’s leather jacket while he fucked my mother in the next room I’d gotten a job as a bartender. But the pay wasn’t enough and when the money ran out I was thrown out on the streets, broke with nowhere to go and itching for a fix.

So I returned to doing the one job I was good at.

Turning Tricks.

The base was pounding through the building. A repetitive thump that pulsed through my entire body. And the hundreds of dancing people bouncing to the beat assisted the vibration.

Fists raised in the air. Bodies grinding against each other. Everything dulled by a haze of bright blinking lights, alcohol and smack.

I’d been given two thousand dollars for the entire night, and honestly, nothing all that bad had happened yet. Sometime after midnight some E was passed around. Tiny brightly colored pills that my vision blurred into a psychedelic rainbow and I couldn’t see how many I took.

After that, everything had a sort of distance to it. A calm serene blanket draped over the most horrifying of events. I was fucked a couple of times, I lost count of how many. I felt dirty and raw afterwards, covered in milky liquid.

Next thing I knew I was lying facedown on the black leather couch with my arm hanging over the side.

Morning light was pouring through the windows and the room was mostly empty. On the glass table next to the couch some guys were snorting what looked like coke off a girl’s stomach as she laid on the coffee table. She giggled as they did so; throwing her head back and pointing her slightly glazed eyes toward the ceiling.

She was wearing no shirt of any kind and her large, and seemingly fake breasts, bounced with every one of her laughs. If I were interested in such a thing I’m sure I would’ve been aroused.

I groaned as I rolled over on the couch, drawing some attention toward myself.

“Does the whore have a hangover?” One of the men said with a razor smile and a flick of his tongue through his thin lips. Then he stood and dropped a pile of bills all over me.

I sat up, despite my head splitting open and began to gather the bills and count them. Sliding through the smooth green paper with practiced ease. At nineteen, I’d had six years of experience.

“This is fifteen hundred.” I held the wad of cash up as evidence while simultaneously pulling on my shirt.

The man shrugged. He sat down on the glass table, lifted the girl’s head into his lap and began playing with her hair.

“You passed out before the night was over. Count yourself lucky you’re getting paid at all?”

“What?” I stood, despite the soreness. “That’s bullshit. You’re shorting me.”

It was so very frustrating trying to communicate with people who were high. The blonde girl giggled and sat up on the table. The leftover specks of white powder that was clinging to her chest fell into her lap.

One of the two other men admonished her for the waste, but when she pulled herself into his lap and kissed him he shut up.

Since the bitch was no longer lying on the table and the man who had had her head in his lap was just standing up now I kicked the table over to make a point.

That drew the attention of all four of them. See, it’s not that the five-hundred was that big a loss but if word got around that I’d put up with being shorted I was in trouble.

The man in charge looked at me with fire in his eyes but his voice was flat. Like rapids racing under a sheet of ice. “You’re fucking lucky that didn’t break. Now get out before I do something I’m gonna regret.”

“Give me my five-hundred and I’ll be on my merry way.”

“Who the hell are you to make demands from me, whore?”

The blonde girl giggled again and I lost it. I threw my first back and hit the man. A crunching sound echoed through the room. His head snapped back and his hand came up to cover his nose.

Then, before I knew it, he was coming at me. He slammed into me and we both went flying backwards, knocking into the couch and tipping it over, bringing both of us down with it.

My head bounced against the ground and my already blurry vision was fucked to hell. Still I kept reaching up and punching, occasionally my fists connected with meaty flesh and I elicited a grunt of pain.

He punched as well, but the pain was more like a dull thud in the background as I focused all my energy on getting him off of me.

The girl was screaming now and god I wanted to fucking hit her. The other two men were shouting things. One of them appeared to be trying to break us up, saying things like “Stop you fucking idiots.”

The other was chanting, “Kill the whore.”

Finally I managed to get my leg out and I kicked him hard in the stomach. He doubled over and I climbed on top of him. I pulled my fist back for a powerful blow when I heard a loud bang and I felt something rip into my side.

Oh shit.

I’d never been gunshot before, but I’d heard horror stories from some of the others that frequent the same streets as I do. I could feel warm blood soaking the side of my shirt. The man slid out from under me and I fell to the floor, my consciousness ebbing out like the tide.

Words floated through the air. Frantic. Panic. I didn’t catch all the words but I got a few.

Finish him. Murder charge. Police. Blame. Trash.

The next thing I knew, my arms were pulled out and they were dragging me in a way that killed my shoulders. The floor was smooth and hard and I glided across it fairly easily. Then a door opened and a burst of cool morning air hit.

The smooth surface was gone. Now I was being dragged on concrete. I wanted to fight, to scream. I couldn’t even open my eyes.

Getting dragged down the stairs hurt the worst and I could tell that some pretty impressive bruises were forming on my stomach right now. It was then that I realized I was going to die.

Another man grabbed my legs and I was lifted onto a bumpy surface. The stench made my nose twitch. A dumpster. Throwing the whore out with the trash. I had never hated my mother as much as I did in this moment.

Something gooey was leaking from one of the trash bags and into my hair.

I’d lost my sense of time. Seconds. Minutes. Hours.

It was just pain. A beating pulse in my side. Throbbing. Bleeding. I’d thrown up somewhere along the line and it was drying on my chin, the rest of it dripping through the trash bags to the bottom of the dumpster.

The sudden loud noises hurt my head. Wooing sirens. Screeching. More pain.

Goddamn.

I tried to bring my hands up to cover my ears but the shooting jolts of agony induced by the movement were worse than the scratching inside of my head.

The last thing I saw before I passed out was the blue and red light of the ambulance coming down the street.


	4. Chapter 4

“We grew up believing no one would ever fall in love with us. That we’d be lonely forever” –Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Sight is a funny thing. Not the kind that kids go to the eye doctor to get glasses for. I’m referring to the figurative meaning of the word. The profound and complex way you see other people. All the strands that come together to make up who they are—the book’s cover included. And more importantly, how you see yourself._

_All people can’t possibly see their reflections accurately or there wouldn’t be so many skinny girls putting their fingers down their throats or writing notes on their arms with razor blades. But does every single person see themselves in funhouse mirrors, or just a select few?_

_Be yourself is such fucked up advice because no one knows who they are, no one sees themselves the right way. So here’s a different kind of advice: You are who you are, whoever that may be. Changes made for anyone other than you will melt away like ice left outside of the fridge. And you may not be beautiful to everyone, no one is. But you’re beautiful to someone._

_I guarantee it._

_***_

Going to prom with Sandy was the greatest thing that could’ve possibly happened to me.

            No, I’d never asked her to the eighth grade dance. I hadn’t even gone. Too humiliated and too lonely what with Misha being gone. Instead I’d sat at home, on the couch, eating chips that I would later throw up and watching the newest season of _Doctor Who_.

            My parents were busy people, neither had a job with a particularly high income. The fact that they both worked, and that I made sure to puke when they weren’t around and always use air freshener and breath-mints, helped me hides my secret. Freshman year of high school I was still beefy, but I’d been losing weight and jogging in my spare time so I was in good enough shape to follow in my big brother’s footsteps and join the basketball team.

            By sophomore year I looked like most other guys.

            By junior year I looked better.

            And it was all thanks to purging (and I suppose I should credit Misha for helping me with the idea).

            I rolled over in bed and ran my eyes over Sandy. The blinds were down but open and so the light fell in rectangular shapes over her tan body. Her black hair ran down her back, disheveled in a way that made her even more attractive, and I smiled. Yep, I had a lot to thank purging (and Misha) for.

Sandy looked almost golden in the morning sunlight.

            The alarm began to screech but I managed to shut it off before it woke Sandy, who snuffled in her sleep and shifted slightly. She hated when I woke her up before it was time for her classes.

            Yawning and stretching, I rolled out of bed and padded to the closet. I pulled on a pair of gym shorts and a wife-beater before going for my daily jog. I didn’t eat breakfast, I did my best not to purge whenever Sandy was over-I had this fear that she’d be able to smell it on breath when we kissed.

            My hands were shaking a little and as I jogged my mind kept being pulled back the tiny white box sitting in the corner of my sock drawer.

            After college classes today I planned to take Sandy back to my place—I knew she would agree because she hated her dorm mate and ever since she’d discovered that I lived off campus she’d spent more time at my place than hers—cook a nice dinner, tell her how much I loved her and get down on one knee. We’d been dating since we were juniors and at nineteen we’d been together for three years and I saw no future where we weren’t together.

Sandy was perfect. Beautiful, funny, smart and her parents loved me.

Forever seemed like a pretty good amount of time to spend with someone like that.

Sweat began dripping into my eye and I wiped it away with the back of my hand. I blinked a couple times but it was still hard to see. And I was starting to feel a little nauseous. Maybe I was coming down with something.

I shook my head, my long hair fanning out when I did, and leaned forward, pushing myself to run faster. Instead of going around the neighborhood a second time I headed home.

Going straight for the medicine cabinet I popped a pill or two of cold medication. Sandy was still asleep when I checked in; she had migrated to the middle of the bed, her arms splayed out on either side of her. Her long eyelashes fluttered and a smile spread over my face involuntarily.

I took a long time in the shower, the way I always did. It annoyed Sandy because she kept all her makeup and hair whatevers in the bathroom but it was the one concession I wouldn’t make.

After I was dried off and redressed, this time in clothes for class, I went back into the bedroom and softly shook her awake. Her “Good morning” grated against my ears and I considered taking the day off because despite the medication, I still felt nauseous.

Sandy kissed my quickly, then got up to set about her day.

I was in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water. Half an hour until I had to be in class. I was training to become a teacher. It had always been a dream of mine, to follow in my mother’s footsteps and teach. Though, she had been an English teacher and I was looking at going into math, Algebra specifically.

 I don’t know why I was drawn to kids that were about fourteen to sixteen years old. Possibly because those years had been such a rough time for me.

“Jared!”

The way Sandy called my name almost made me drop my water. Instead, I placed the glass on the counter and reminded myself that it was probably just a spider or something. I arrived in the doorway of the bedroom and I froze.

In Sandy’s hand is was tiny white box. An _open_ tiny white box.

“That, that um—“ I trailed off. There was a thrumming happening behind my eyes. I swayed a little and I grabbed the door to steady myself. I was panicking, but this wasn’t a normal kind of panic.

Something was wrong.

It was like trying to stand on a rocking boat drifting through perilous ocean waves with a hammer pounding at the inside of your head.

And then spots started jumping into my visions, like black specks behind my eyes. Sandy was calling my name. Screaming. I felt my back hit the floor.

Thank god it was carpeted.

I couldn’t tell how much time had passed but darkness was coming for me Sweeping over me like black fog or a blanket. Air was getting thicker, harder to suck in.

The last thing I saw before I passed out was the blue and red light of the ambulance mixing with the sunlight that poured through my bedroom window.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Disclaimer* I am not a doctor, nor do I know much about law. There's a good chance that this could all be complete bullshit, but please just go with it.
> 
> Thank you, and as always, Kudos and Comments are like love in digital form :)

“If you think for one second no one knows what you've been going through; be accepting of the fact that you are wrong, that the long drawn and heavy breaths of despair have at times been felt by everyone–that pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you a legion.” –Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Everybody wants help, but nobody wants to admit to wanting it. It’s a secret desire we wrap up in blankets and hide underneath our beds. A folded piece of paper that we tape under a desk drawer. For many people, it’s a result of pride. Everyone dreams of standing on a pedestal but no one wants to think about the latter climb it took to get there. We like to convince others that we have invisible wings, stretching out wide and dipping into lakes filled with liquid success when we fly over their crystal waters. We want to believe that we are immune to the struggle everyone else must push through. Climbing the steep mountainside one grip at a time and praying that we don’t grab on to anything libel to come loose._

_And the most interesting part is that not only are we embarrassed by our need for assistance, but that we are embarrassed by our embarrassment. So we justify it by convincing, not only others, but also ourselves that we are bulletproof. That we need not use latters because we can fly. Of course we can, can’t you? Chin tilted upwards. Eyebrow raised._

_And you will nod and say, “Of course I can.” Because you don’t want to admit to needing help anymore than anyone else does._

_It is this phenomenon and perpetual, infectious belief that we can fly that leads us to the edge of skyscrapers. Swearing we’re soaring all the way to the pavement._

_***_

White bed. White walls. White curtains blocking out the outside world.

There are no flowers. There are no people. The chairs in the corner of the room are empty and the only sound is the humming of the air conditioner and the drip drip drip of the clear liquid from the bag into the tube that is connected to my arm by a needle.

And not the fun kind.

Time is a foreign concept. A language I can no longer speak. It could’ve been days ago that the nurse with the curly grey hair bent over me and said, “He’s coming ‘round.” It could’ve been minutes.

The memories come back slowly, like I’m trudging through mud to in order to retrace my steps from the party last night until now. Had the party been last night? Who knows?

I should feel panicked when I remember the gunshot; instead it feels like it happened to somebody else. I remember that there was pain but can’t accurately recall what it felt like. Like I can’t match a face to a name of a person I haven’t seen in ages.

I also have a vague recollection of this room. Ghosts and echoes and footprints of memories. Half-erased recollections of the speckled white walls and the itchy white sheets and the sterile smell clogging up my nose. And the there are the things I remember feeling…

Shaking. Sweating. My mouth tastes like vomit and dry cotton. Even now, my entire body aches.

I know this feeling. I’d tried once over the years and I’d lasted less than two days.

This is withdrawal.

But it isn’t in the screaming-in-your-face, entire-world-is-trembling, out-of-your-fucking-head withdrawal. It’s more of a vestige. The scar left after a deep scrape. This knowledge makes me question whether I’d been asleep longer than I assumed.

I look around and eventually my eyes land on a white remote of sorts, attached to the bed by a curly white wire that reminds me of a pigs tail. It lies on the small table next to my bed and I reach over to pick it up, sending jolts of pain through my body, radiating through a spot in my side where the bullet pierced. On the remote is an array of buttons and one of them is red with a white cross on it.

It is within seconds that the nebulously familiar nurse with the curly hair comes in, a smile wide on yellowing teeth.

“Well its good to see you really awake, it’ been a tough week for you.”

_A week?_

I open my mouth in an attempt to speak and a croak comes out.

“No, no, don’t try and talk just yet. Let me get you some ice chips, okay?” I nod mutely. My fingers come up to brush my neck because it feels like I’m breathing sandpaper and that’s when I notice the clip-like object attached to my pointer finger and relaying information to a machine—a machine that’s attached to the metal pole that holds a bag of liquid—via wire.

The nurse exits and is back in less than a minute. She carries with her a small white cup full of ice chips. White latex gloves cover her hands and she places a chip on my tongue.

At first the ice is so cold I fight the instinct to spit to out, but after moving it around my mouth for awhile and feeling a small stream of liquid slide down my throat I open my mouth willingly for another.

The nurse has a kind, patient smile and she doesn’t try to rush me. It must be ten minutes before I attempt to speak again.

“What happened?”

She places the cup on the table next to my bed. “You were shot, honey. We don’t know by whom, whether it was the owner of the apartment or one of his guests. We were hoping you could help the police with that when they come ‘round.”

I find myself shaking my head so quickly that the world around my grows fuzzy like a smudged painting.

“No,” I croak out, “No police.”

The nurse takes a deep sigh and then places her hand on my shoulder. I want her to move it. I don’t like being touched, ever. But my mind is clouded with panic and if my entire body didn’t feel fuzzy, like someone was sticking it with a millions pins and needles (again, not the fun kind) I might’ve tried to get up, or grab her wrist. I might’ve tried to do anything to convey that I _did not under any circumstances want the police involved_.

God, I need a fix.

Best-case scenario, they found the guy that shot me. But even in that scenario I ended up behind bars right alongside him. Doing about the same thing I was doing now except the drugs would be shittier and I wouldn’t even get paid for the non-consensual sex.

            Worst case scenario, the cops find out I’m a whore, beat the shit out of me and lock me up without even looking for the ass who put a bullet in my abdomen. No one cares about whores; I learned that lesson early on.

            “Honey, the police were called nine days ago when you were brought in,” her grip on my shoulder tightens and I can’t tell if she is trying to ground me in a comforting way, or hold me in place incase I try to make a break for it. I would if I thought I could stand. “They’re going to come back later today or maybe tomorrow if you’re not feeling up to it just yet, and they’re going to ask you a lot of questions. About the party that night. About why you were shot. Who shot you. Who _you_ are. And,” she sucks in a breath and I know I will not like what I am about to hear, the breath is the equivalent to the dramatic music in a horror movie just before the jump-scare, “the substances we found in your bloodstream upon your admittance.”

            I laugh. I can’t help it. It feels like cat claws digging into my already shredded up throat and as my stomach moves with the force of my laughter I am certain that I have been set on fire but I don’t even attempt to stop myself.

“The ecstasy,” I say to her, breathlessly. There was probably more in my system than E: alcohol—which is a problem because I am under aged—and maybe even smack. But I don’t want to mention that last one on the off chance it didn’t show up on whatever scan they did and I don’t want to mention they alcohol because I don’t think they know how old I am. They must have figured out that my ID was forged. “I was shot, thrown out into a dumpster like fucking trash, and you’re worried about the fact that I popped a couple Es?”

God, I need a fix.

She withdraws her hands. “There’s something else as well. Some marks we found around your…Look, I just, I have to ask this: can you recall being raped?”

I throw my head back and laugh again.

The nurse just stares. It seems she does not appreciate my sense of humor.

After a few moments she forces a cough into her fist. “Young man, I don’t think you are grasping the severity of this situation. You may be looking at serving time for this—and under aged drinking, if you’re as young as I suspect.”

I allow my head to fall back onto the pillows. I fucking knew it. This isn’t fair. I didn’t ask for their help or their scans or any of this bullshit. (And yes, I realize I am being irrational and would most likely be dead if the ambulance hadn’t arrived, but still.)

God, I need a fix.

“There is, of course, another option,” the nurse says. I lean my head up just a little, just enough to look at her. Her beady eyes travel up and down my face, as though she’s gauging my reaction.

“Which is?” I force out. A beat. “Come on, the suspense is _killing_ me.”

She shakes her head at my sarcasm, her grey curls swinging around as she does so. Then, she leans forward and opens the top drawer of the table next to my bed and pulls out a brochure. She doesn’t hand it to me, thank god, because I wouldn’t have been able to move my arms and it would’ve been humiliating, but she holds it in front of my face.

I wonder how long she’s had it in there, waiting for me to wake up so she can shove this down my throat. I feel as though I was played by her earlier kindness. The sweet old lady who used to look to me as though she belonged behind the counter of a candy store now reminds me of a spider, wrapping her silky web around me.

The words on the brochure are white against the blue background.

‘Graystone Rehabilitation Center’, it reads.

 _God_ , I need a fix.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, not a doctor, sorry. Please just go with it.

“I used to scratch ransom notes into my skin, as if I somehow kidnapped me from myself and waited to be beautiful so I could pay unmarked compliments to the parts of me that needed to believe I am worth something.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Everybody wants perfection, but nobody wants to admit to wanting it. We look in the mirror and we see everything wrong with us like a big, lit up, neon sign and we want them all to go away. And then they do go away and something else slides in to take their place. Nose too big? Get a new one. And you feel great for like two days until you wake up and realize your eyes are too far apart._

_We walk past people on the street and wish we were them. We whisper into our pillows in the middle of snowy, starlight nights that we would give anything if we could be perfect._

_But what is perfect. Tall? Average? Skinny? Blonde or Brunette? Brown eyes or blue? No one can agree on one concrete definition. Everyone looks into a different warped mirror and longs for a different warped thing. We want to change to be perfect but there is no such thing when the variable of preference comes into play. You might as well chase echoes or rainbows or ghosts._

_No matter how much makeup and plastic surgery you throw into the blender. No matter how long you stand there with your finger pushing in the ‘grind’ button and the screeching noise swirling through the air around you. The result will never be right, not to everyone._

_So why bother searching for something unseen?_

_I don’t know._

_Why do we think that people who fold their hands together, lower their heads, and send their wishes to the stars, expecting an answer, are perfectly sane? But we can’t say the same about teenage boys with a simple desire to be liked by all. Lots of people chase things they’ve never seen, but only a select few are crucified for it._

_I wonder what the result would’ve been, were I to tell the doctors that God told me to purge._

_***_

“Bulimia? Like the fucking eating disorder? Like what all those really boney cheerleader girls have?” My father runs his hand over his red face and when he pulls it away it seems as though there are more wrinkles than there used to be.

I groan and lean back on the pillows. No matter how many times I insist that I’m fine—that I just forgot to eat breakfast and that I now know working out on an empty stomach is a bad idea and that it will never ever happen again I pinky promise with a fucking cherry on top—no one listens.

Not even Sandy, who stands in the corner of my hospital room, her arms crossed and her tiny nose crinkled in what seems a lot like disgust.

The doctor, who has clearly had enough of my father’s shit, leans forward slightly and says slowly, as though speaking to a child, “I assure you, Mr. Padalecki, bulimia and anorexia can be found in males, as well. And oftentimes in athletes, such as wrestlers.”

“For the last time, I don’t have bulimia!” The motion I make with my arms tugs at the IV drip that has been inserted into my vein and I flinch. “I just forgot to eat and I had a bit of a fright.” My eyes flick to Sandy but she isn’t looking at me. As far as I can tell, she has told no one of her discovery, of the tiny white box that she had held in her hand so gently, as though it were a baby bird. I’m dying to have a minute alone with her, just to get her thoughts on the topic, if not a concrete answer.

“I’m afraid there are signs, Mr. Padalecki. The nutrients found in your blood were lacking and the constant vomiting has begun to rot your teeth.”

From the corner of my eye I see Sandy stiffen. I think of the many kisses we’ve shared. The times our tongues have explored the insides of each other’s mouths. I want to blame her for her disgust at my disorder, but to do so would involve admitting to having a disorder, something I have no intention of doing.

This is such a fucking mess.

“Can’t he just eat more, or something,” Sandy offers. She makes a move, as though she intends to uncross her arms but them aborts it. Her eyes meet mine briefly, and then shift away. As though she’s guilty.

It’s the way you look at a child with cancer, or an old woman who’s permanently hunched over, or someone with Down’s syndrome. One of those times you feel like an asshole for simply _not_ being impaired. And you tell yourself that you want to apologize or ask if they need help with anything but you don’t because you’re certain they want to be treated like normal people, when in reality the reason you don’t ask is because everything inside of you is screaming to run away with your goddamn tail between your legs—like the little boy with the bald head and the tubes sticking out of him is the monster from the closet in your childhood bedroom.

“Can I have a minute alone with my girlfriend?” I ask quietly. But my tone instills the certainty that any answer other than ‘yes’ will cause problems.

The doctor nods politely and then exits the room, my father shuffling behind him and shaking his shiny, bald, head. Running his hands through the place where his hair used to be.

The sound the door makes as it shuts seems much louder than it is.

I wait for Sandy but when she doesn’t meet my eyes or walk over to the bed I call out for her “Babe?” Her brown eyes finally lift from the ground and that’s when I see that they are wide with tears. I sit up straighter and reach my arms out to her. “Sandy, babe, what’s wrong?” She comes willingly and I take both of her tiny hands in my large ones.

A shaky inhale. A slight sob.

I need her to stop now because I don’t know how to handle it when girls cry. Especially when I don’t now what they’re crying about. I could solve a Rubik’s cube in the time it would take for me to figure out the right thing to say. So I stay silent and I rub my thumbs back and forth over her soft hands.

“I remember,” she squeezes her eyes shut briefly and tears slide out, “back in middle school, you were heavier. And then after a few years you weren’t anymore, and I assumed it was puberty and basketball or something I never really thought about it. But it seemed like you went from Jared ‘Fat-alecki’ to this hot guy over night.” I flinch at the use of my middle-school nickname, I hadn’t even found out about it’s existence until years after I’d dropped the last few pounds at a party when Richard Speight got drunk. “And thinking about it now, you hardly ever eat. You work out religiously…it’s so fucking obvious, how could I not have seen it? I’m in love with you for Christ’s sake. You _do_ have bulimia Jared. And I feel like a part of this is my fault—me and all those other kids that treated you like shit back in school. And I just…I mean _why_? Jared, why?”

I’m stunned. I feel as through I’ve just tumbled onto the ground and now I’m lying there unable to move and staring up at the sky in shock. I didn’t think it was a big deal. People use diet pills and shit, my way is just more effective. But as my girlfriend leans into me and I wrap my arms around her, rocking her gently and hushing her I can’t help but feel as though I missed some big, blinking, red sign on the road to purging.

And I just can’t understand. What’s the big deal? What’s so wrong with wanting to look good? So my teeth are a little fucked up, so what?

After a few minutes Sandy pulls away and grabs a tissue from the side table before sitting down in one of the bedside chairs. She dabs at her eyes, cleaning up any stray mascara.

_I feel like a part of this is my fault._

I want to deny it. I want to tell her that none of this had anything to do with her but my mind keeps flashing back to that day in gym class when I admitted to wanting to go to the dance with her and the whispers and chuckles that resulted.

But that didn’t make it her _fault_. Sandy had never been mean to me, at least, not to my face. She had always been polite, if a little distant. Maybe that contributed to the fact that, back then, I pictured her as some kind of perfect, plastic, Barbie doll.

It occurs to me that Sandy had never actually liked me back then, she had tolerated me.

“Jared,” her voice cuts through my thoughts, “I think you need help. Like, professional help.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to rebuff the suggestion. To recoil like a slinky or a snake just before it strikes. To repeat my mantra of _I don’t have a problem, I don’t have a problem, I don’t have a fucking problem_! But I look at the woman seated in front of me—the woman with her head in her hands, and tears on her cheeks—the woman I love, and the words get stuck in my throat.


	7. Chapter 7

“If today is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow, today will have ended.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Have you ever pretended to hate something? A church retreat? Family Vacation? Some shitty trip to a resort that your mom pushed you into and you moan and groan that you aren’t going until the day comes and you have no choice but to throw your bags in the back of the mini-van and climb in._

_That’s what people mean when they say, “You have to want to get help, or you won’t get better.” Because even if that resort is the best place you have ever been in your entire life, you’ll deny it. You’ll kick-and-scream when it’s time to go back because to do otherwise would force you to admit that you were wrong—and that’s a big no-no for most people._

_Pride is a dangerous goddamn thing. It blinds us, sharpies the lenses on our glasses so that all we see is black._

_We’d rather climb than ask for a ladder and we’d rather fall than end up using a latter we adamantly insist we do not need._

***

It looks like a cross between a tiny hotel and a school, from the outside at least. There are two other people in the white van that drove us would-be-prisoners from the hospital to Graystone Rehab. I’m not certain if the others are completely off the hook when it comes to jail time or if I’m the only one.

They take my phone, my money, would’ve taken my car keys if I had any.

The girl from the van, Genevieve, gives me a wink as she hands over her key to the young woman in the blue scrubs. On the drive over she told me that she was here for anger management because she’d keyed her boyfriend’s car. She looked remarkably pleased with herself as she described the sound it made when she dug the metal tip into “that cheating bustard’s new Ferrari. Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it Jense?” She had asked, slapping my arm with the back of her hand. I wanted to fucking scream at her for calling me that, but I decided, considering the whole anger thing, that doing so would’ve been a particularly bad idea.

God, I need a fix.

The young woman comes out from behind the counter and introduces herself as Katie Cassidy. She then begins to give the three of us a tour.

The third member of our got-out-of-jail-free club is Sebastian Roché. He didn’t say anything on the ride over-although for anyone to say anything they would’ve had to interrupt Genevieve’s interminable tirade about her prick of an ex, which was, for obvious reasons, a shitty option. So I figure, maybe he isn’t shy; maybe he just likes his balls attached to his body. Don’t we all? Though, unfortunately, this means I have no fucking clue what he’s here for.

The tour kicks off with Nurse Cassidy showing us the bedrooms. They look kind of like classy hotel rooms and it occurs to me that this place is really just a voluntary mental institution. (Just, not so voluntary for me.) And I’ve read _One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest_ -and by ‘read’ I mean that the movie was the only thing on the motel TV at three in the morning—and I’m starting to think I would’ve been safer in jail.

She shows us (1) a tiny gym with, like, two elliptical machines and a bunch of giant-ass balls that people apparently do yoga with, (2) a room with a red rug, a fake fireplace, and a circle of black chairs where I assume people talk about their feelings and shit, and (3) the courtyard where we eat.

The place is a couple notches away from shit-hole but I’ve stayed in way worse motels over the years and I’m hoping that the security will be equally sucky in the hopes that I can have somebody sneak in some smack, or _something_ to hold me over. It would have to be somebody I’m close to, though, because I don’t have any money on me at the moment and not many people trust I owe yous in my line of work.

I need to figure something out fast because I’m never gonna be able to make it sixty days in this loony bin without getting high.

After the tour, nurse Cassidy takes us back to the courtyard and tells us we have a half hour to eat lunch before we will be shown to our rooms. The rest of the crazies ate earlier so the three of us huddle together at one of the round tables and soak in the sunlight it feels as though we haven’t seen in days.

“So what’s wrong with you two,” Genevieve asks, motioning to the two of us with her fork, before stabbing it into a piece of watermelon. The fork is plastic; all of the utensils are; they don’t trust us with real silverware. Like I said, voluntary mental institution. “Come on, Jense, I told you.”

I sigh, knowing she won’t leave it alone now. I feel naked as her brown eyes dig into me. I feel like if I lie she’ll be able to tell-like some sort of psycho-bitch, bat-like, intuition. The kind of x-ray vision that sees things a lot deeper inside of you than your bones.

“Got caught doing heroin,” I finally say.

“Yeah, I figured you for an addict. You got the pale, thin, ghost look going on. Plus, you’ve got so many track marks running up and down your arms it looks like you’ve got the chicken pox or some shit.” I look down at my food and move my rice around with my fork. I can feel my face flushing in anger and shame. And she doesn’t even know the worst part of me, yet. “Sorry,” Gen says, noticing my reaction. Her teeth catch her lip, “I have a tendency to say what I think. I mean, _whatever_ I think. There’s just, like, no brain-to-mouth filter, you know.”

No, I really don’t. If I didn’t have a filter than a week ago would’ve been far from the first time somebody shot me.

God, I need a fix.

“How about you, Seb?” Gen has to squint to look at the blonde man.

Sebastian shifts slightly in his seat and his shoulders come up, as though he is trying to make himself smaller. I’m surprised. He honestly hadn’t struck me as shy. His expensive clothes and usually perfect posture had screamed spoiled brat to me.

“Sort of the same thing,” he murmurs. “My dad caught me snorting cocaine so he cut me off, emptied my bank account. I was broke and so I started trying to make money dealing. One of my customers wasn’t satisfied with the product, I guess. He, uh, beat the shit out of me. Ended up in the hospital and…well, you know.”

I feel so bad for the kid—who really isn’t a kid, he looks about twenty-one, at least two years older than me—and his obvious distress at having so much attention on him so I ask, “How’d you end up in the hospital, Gen?”

She looks started. Her admission is quiet. It is the closest to embarrassed I’ve ever seen her. “Well, after I keyed my ex’s car he sort of, ran me down with it.” That explained the bruise that still lingered on her forehead and the still-healing scrape that ran up her left arm.

A hush falls over the table as the quiet realization that all of our lives fucking suck, that _life_ in general fucking sucks, sinks into us like water into soil.

After a moment, Genevieve picks up her carton of milk, that smells like it was around back when dinosaurs roamed the planet and people owned portable CD players, and shouts “To keying your ex’s car.”

Seb stares at her in confusion but I shake my head a small smile on my face. I raise my bottle of water into the air as well and say, “To shooting up.”

Sebastian finally gets with the program and holds up his own water. His hand is shaking slightly but he looks almost happy, caught in the kind of moment where you can’t be anything but.

“To dealing coke.”

“Huzzah,” we all cheer—Gen begins shouting it and the we follow her lead—before tapping our drinks together, leaning back and taking a sip.

It’s absolutely silent before Gen turns to the side and spits her milk all over the grass, and then begins scraping her teeth over her tongue, as though to get rid of the taste. That’s when we all burst out laughing.


	8. Chapter 8

“I sit before flowers hoping they will train me in the art of opening up. I stand on mountaintops believing that avalanches will teach me to let go. I know nothing but I am here to learn.” – Shane Koyczan

 

_Jared_

_Have you ever pretended to be fine? Pretended so hard that the façade became a reality. The masquerade becomes the truth. Not a real truth, nor a real reality. But it was something you believed, despite once knowing otherwise._

_You stare at a broken clock and convince yourself it’s ticking. You’ve seen the rusty interworking of it but even when a crack spreads across it’s black and white face you pretend the hands still spin, round and round. And if you don’t stare at it too long or too hard you fall between the crevices of a cliff and you fall into your own deception._

_Money can’t buy happiness, but enough time can sell anyone on a lie._

_***_

It looks like a mix of warm reds and deep browns. The recliner I’m seated in is one of these aforementioned reds. I can see where the fabric was stitched together and I run my fingernails over the marks while I wait for the therapist to sit in the beige chair across from me.

The lamplight is the same shade as candlelight and it makes the woman’s face look younger. “Sam Ferris,” she had introduced herself when I’d first entered the building, “just take a seat in the other room and I’ll be with you in a moment.” So I had, and here she was, settling herself into the chair with a clipboard in her hand and I suddenly feel as though I’m an insect under a microscope. The feeling is unpleasant and it makes the corn muffin Sandy forced me to eat prior to my appointment churn unpleasantly in my stomach.

The muffin can’t weigh much, but it feels like I’ve swallowed a lump of coal.

“So how are you today, Jared?” Her eyes are a dark color but they are bright and kind as they look at me. They are inviting and I’m sure she is very good at her job when she’s working with real patients.

“Good.”

She leans back in the chair and crosses her leg before scribbling something on her clipboard. When she looks up her smile is vaguely amused.

“Well that’s good, but I was hoping you’d go a bit deeper. Care to expand?” I shake my head and Sam taps her pen on the clipboard twice before placing it aside on the round wooden table next to her chair. “Jared, be honest with me, you don’t want to be here, do you?”

It is in my nature to lie. To insist, to my dying breath, whatever it is that she thinks I want to hear. When people ask how you are you say that you’re fine because any other answer will require an explanation that you don’t want to give and they don’t want to listen to. But it is occurring to me that maybe Sam Ferris actually does want to hear it. Hell, I’m paying her to hear it.

So I tell her the truth. “I want to make my fiancé happy.”

My lips can’t help but twitch up at the word fiancé. Sandy and I had made an agreement: She wanted to be my wife, but only if I was willing to get help for myself. The compromise had been the woman sitting in front of me, Monday and Wednesday before classes.

Sam smiles at me again. Her lips are the color of her nails, which are the color of my chair. It makes sense. She strikes me as a very coordinated woman.

“So you’re here for her?”

“Yes.” I am smiling, glad she understands.

“Not for yourself?”

I’m about to say “no,” before I catch myself. I feel as though I’ve answered wrong, but I don’t see what’s wrong with doing something for someone else any more than I can tell what’s wrong with wanting to look good.

“Look, Jared, if you’re not willing to open up how about I take a guess and you nod if I’m right.” Is seems easier than speaking myself so I tilt my head affirmatively. “I think, that you think, that you don’t belong here.” I look up at her guiltily but I nod anyway. “So now I have to ask, Jared—and know I can’t tell anyone what you say in these sessions unless I believe you are a serious danger to yourself or someone else—do you intend to stop purging?”

Finally, a question I can answer right. I nod. “It’s not a big deal,” I tell her, “I’ll just stop throwing up and the problem is solved. I don’t mean to be rude or anything but coming here is really just a technicality. It makes Sandy feel better so...” I shrug. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

She’s nodding but it feels like she’s humoring me. Like when your parents spell out curse words while they’re in your presence even though your old enough to read. I don’t like the heavy feeling of air laden with condescension. It only adds to the weight of the coal in my stomach.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” I blurt. I want to reel the words back in the second that they’re out. They float in the air between us.

            Her sigh should make me feel bad but it, like every other word she has spoken or sound she has made, is tinged was an elitist essence. An I-know-better-than-you-ideal. I don’t enjoy being talked down to. It’s one of the things I hated about the doctor back when I was staying at the hospital.

“I’d advise against it but I don’t think you’d listen.”

No, I won’t listen. I won’t listen to anything she says until she stops talking to me like a child, so it really is better if I go now. I’ll talk to Sandy, reason with her, get another therapist if I really have to.

I stand and begin to put on my Jacket, which had been draped over the side of my chair. I suddenly feel claustrophobic in the small, warm, room with it’s lack of windows. I want to be outside. Need to be outside in order to breathe.

“Can I ask you one last question?”

 _Can I stop you?_ “Sure.”

“Why did you do it? Why did you purge?”

I pause. I’d been expecting the question at some point during this meeting and the answer is simple. “I didn’t like the way I looked.”

I flash to the children in gym. To my mother suggesting I buy bigger clothes. To my hand tracing the bulge in my stomach. Staring at it in the mirror. It was even larger in profile. I remember the fat jiggling on my arm as I ran to catch the bus. In truth, it was because other people didn’t like the way I looked, but what was the difference? I wanted to change so I did, by whatever means necessary.

“Do you like the way you look now?”

“Of course.”

I don’t mean to sound conceded but I know I look good. I mean, look at my fiancé. And I could feel the lust-heated stare of women, and even some men, when I went out. Could feel the warmth of the envy and the want.

“So why didn’t you stop? You’ve looked this way for a long time. Your in fantastic shape. You have a beautiful fiancé. Why did you keep throwing up?”

I zip up my jacket. “You said one question.” Before I head for the door.

When I walk outside the sunlight hits my face and the cars rush by on the street in front of the sidewalk I’m standing on and I try not to think about her last question. I try not to think about how maybe the thing I wanted to throw up was something other than baby fat.


	9. Chapter 9

“Depression is dangerous, and we can't afford to have 9-1-1 dismiss unhappiness as if it wasn't a God damn emergency.” – Shane Koyczan.

 

_Jensen_

_This is the time I will look back on and ask myself, “What did I miss?” Scouting for clues—fingerprints and blood spatters—with a microscope as if I’m Sherlock fucking Holmes. Flipping through memories like files. Telling myself,_

_I should’ve known._

_I should’ve known._

_I should’ve known._

_Like a record that skips._

_I should’ve noticed something. Some miniscule crack, some thin white scar. There must’ve been a sign. There’s always a sign. A tiny shift in the earth before everything erupts into chaos. The shaky inhale before a sob. The light peaking out before the sun shows his face. What was his sign? What did I miss?_

_It is all I can think of in the days to follow. But this is the story of the day before._

_***_

I was right about the fireplace not working; it’s just there for show.

I learn this during my first session of group therapy, which occurs three days into my stay at Graystone. At first I consider the possibility that they aren’t lighting it because it’s still rather warm out, but when I ask one of the other patients—or whatever the fuck it is we’re called—an Asian kid with a friendly grin named Osric, he tells me that as far as he knows, it’s never been used.

His group is leaving just a mine arrives. Genevieve, who is part of the earlier therapy group, winks and she passes me and squeezes Seb’s shoulder.

We take our seats in the circle of chairs. It feels like story time back at kindergarten.

There are five of us—not including the therapist. Seb, and me sit next to each other and I look around the room, trying to see if I can tell what brand of crazy each person is just from looking. For the most part, I am unsuccessful, except for when my eyes land on a girl with dark hair and red ladder rungs running up her arms. She looks like a tiger.

I roll my eyes. It annoys me that I’ve been shoved in here like I belong, like the things that are wrong with me are all my fault. I didn’t ask to be a whore. I didn’t ask to be a heroin addict.

All I asked for was my dad to be alive again. Not for a forty-three year old pimp to take his place. To take my mother. To take my innocence.

“If you’ll all take your seats, I’d like to get started as soon as possible.” The therapist says with a smile. He’s handsome, blonde hair that’s messy in a professional way. Probably in his mid-thirties, but I’ve been with older. “My name is Jacob Abel, for those of you who don’t know.”

He looks toward Seb and I. I flash him a smile while Seb nods slightly and pulls his sleeves up over his hands.

Jacob clears his throat, “Would you to like to introduce yourselves?”

I look to Seb but he seems lost in his own world, with no intention of answering. So I smile brightly again and say, “I’m Jensen, and this here’s Seb. We just got here a couple days ago.”

The doctor nods and then begins addressing the group as a whole. I watch his throat move as he speaks, the hint of his chest peeking out where his shirt is unbuttoned. I’ll bet he has access some sort of medication. I wonder how nice I’d have to be to get my hands on it because aforementioned hands are starting to shake ever so slightly and I just know it want stop until I’m tripping on something.

“Sebastian, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?”

Seb looks ready to say ‘no’. Ready to turn tail and run. Instead he swallows thickly and say, “Well, I’m from New York. My, uh, my mom’s dead and my dad works a lot so it’s just me…Or, it was just me. I guess I got in with the wrong crowd and I started snorting cocaine. My dad caught me, and he kicked me out.”

“Your dad kicked you out for snorting coke?” It’s tiger-girl. Her arms are crossed, chest puffed out. Her high voice grates at my ears. “I don’t buy it.”

Sebastian shifts uncomfortably; he wipes his nose on his sleeve but doesn’t respond. The dark haired girl just keeps shaking her head at him.

“Liane,” Jacob admonishes.

“What? We’re supposed to be honest, right? Well, I honestly don’t believe him. I know you. You’re dad’s some big shot lawyer right? All rich kids do drugs, no way he’d kick you out for that.”

Sebastian’s head drops so he’s looking at the ground and I feel about five seconds away from strangling little-miss-razor-blade. She’s still staring at him and in the harsh sunlight she looks ugly, kind of like a troll.

God, I need a fix.

“Liane, if there is something else Sebastian wishes to share with us I’m sure he’ll do so when he feels comfortable.” Not good enough. I want the doctor to tear into her for the look she’s putting on Seb’s face.

When Jacob doesn’t say anything else I decide to take matters into my own hands. And Seb better fucking thank me for this because I’m about to blow any shot I have at persuading the good doctor to slip me some pain killers.

First I murmur it under my breath. Just loud enough for tiger to hear me, but not for her to make out my words.

“What was that?” She asks in that god-awful voice of hers.

I look her dead in the eyes. My stare is piercing. Leveling her the way a wrecking ball levels a building. “I said,” my words are harsh, as sharp as the blade she dragged across her wrist so very many times before. “It’s a damn shame you didn’t cut deep enough.”

The doctor calls my name harshly, his mouth is wide open and I no longer find him attractive. He looks more like a fish than a person, just then.

I expect a snotty retort from Liane but she just stares at me too. It appears I’ve hit just the right pressure point to get her to shut her way-too-big mouth. I would feel bad; at least I think I would feel bad, if Seb wasn’t staring up at me like I was a god.

And he does thank me. Late that night, after I’ve gotten back from spending an hour in solitary—which is pretty much an adult timeout in a small white room that nurse Cassidy conveniently forgot to show us on our tour the first day here.

Light’s out was at ten and we’re both staring up at the white panels of the speckled ceiling, neither of us able to sleep when he whispers it. “Thank you.”

“It’s no big deal.” It is a big deal. I was bored out of my skull for the last hour because of how big a deal it is. But I don’t really mind. Something about Seb makes me not mind. Like he’s a kid that needs protecting. I remember feeling relieved when I found out that we were roommates—like, thank god it’s me and not someone who’ll be a dick to him.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if…” I don’t turn to look at him but I hear him roll over so that he’s staring at me, at my profile as my eyes continue to trace the ceiling. “I’m a fag. That’s why he kicked me out. He caught me blowing another guy.”

The confession is quiet, barely a whisper, and the air is heavy with tension as he waits for me to respond.

Honestly, I kind of saw it coming. Takes one to know one and all that.

I could tell him I don’t care, but I have a feeling he won’t believe me. I have a feeling he thinks everyone’s like his dad; the way I thought everyone was like my mom for years after running away. I’m not sure why he decided to tell me but I feel kind of honored.

If there’s one friend I wouldn’t mind keeping once I’m out of this shithole it’s him. Gen’s cool and all, but she talks ten times more than she should Seb’s just kind of nice to have around. I wonder if we’ll keep in touch after we get out.

The idea seems so ridiculous that I have to refrain from snorting. What? Me, him and Gen are gonna grab coffee every once and a while in between turning tricks and snorting coke? It suddenly occurs to me that maybe Seb and Gen have different plans than me. Maybe they expect this place to actually help them. Hell, maybe it will.

Eventually, I just settle on saying this.

“Yeah, well, I’m a whore.”

I stiffen, waiting for a sound of disgust. A request to change rooms, but it never comes. Instead I hear to sound of sniffling. That’s when I roll on to my side to see that Seb is crying, big fat tears dripping down his cheeks.

God, I need a fix.

“To deadbeat dads.” He finally whispers.

“To sellout moms.”

“Huzzah,” we say together. Our quiet voices echoing through the room. After a half hour of lying awake and not saying a word I fall asleep to the sound of Sebastian crying.


	10. Chapter 10

“A question like “do you love me?” was an itch our doctors told us not to scratch.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_This is the time I look back on and ask myself, “How did I not see it?” Guilt is a powerful thing, you know. It nibbles on your insides and scratches at your locked doors begging to be let out. To ride the waves of your secrets all the way to the exit. And you can tell yourself_

_It’s not my fault_

_It’s not my fault_

_It’s not my fault_

_Until the words may as well have been written on the back of your hand. May as well have been scratched into the mirror you stare into every day. Right over where “Who’s the fairest of them all,” used to be. I never wanted to be the best. I only wanted to be someone’s best._

_I thought I was hers. And when I found out I wasn’t, that’s when everything came crashing down. And stars fell into the sky and mountains collapsed and there wasn’t a soul around to hear me cry._

***

            I was right about Sandy not being happy; and unhappy was an understatement.

            After walking out on Doctor Ferris I had quite blatantly not thought about what had transpired during our session. Knowing if I went to class I would do nothing but stare blankly at the board and think about it, I ditched. I had driven around, done some grocery shopping in the hopes that seeing so much food around the house would make Sandy a bit more lenient when I told her the news.

            After that I went back to the apartment, sat on my couch and turned on some sitcom I didn’t know the name of. All the while waiting for Sandy to return from classes, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach—though maybe that had just been the corn muffin.

            Sandy walks in at around five in the afternoon, her heels click on the floor and that’s how I know she’s coming. I rub my sweaty hands on my jeans and I fight the urge to go and throw up.

She smiles brightly at me, her full lips curve up into a smile. She still looks perfect, still looks like a plastic doll. I look at her and it’s the strangest thing. Like I know her but I don’t. And suddenly I feel that way about everyone. I can look at the way people are outwardly but I can never see inside them, see if they think and feel and process emotion the way I do. I think that’s one of the reasons I find it so hard to believe someone else will understand me. One of the reasons my therapist appointment didn’t work out.

I consider trying to explain it to Sandy, but it seems too personal.

“How’d it go,” she asks in her cheery voice as she kisses me chastely, her hand coming up to rest on my chest. Her soft skin against my stubble.

I break the kiss and smile at her, “How about we sit down?”

Her smile stiffens. She knows she will not like what she’s about to hear and I half expect her to refuse to sit, to start arguing with me there and then. But she must decide I deserve a chance to explain because she sits down on the edge of the couch and allows me to sit next to her and take her hand, our knees touching.

I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out and after a few moments of hearing the far off sound of the audience clapping for a joke in the television screen Sandy cuts in “Not well, huh?”

I shake my head solemnly, she looks put out, but she also looks like she saw it coming.

“We could try another therapist. Maybe you’d do better with a man.”

It actually feels like it’d be worse with a man, with someone so similar to me who can judge me on a deeper level. Can look at me like I’m less than him with a certainty that a woman can’t.

“I just don’t think that therapy is for me, you know? Maybe I could try doing it myself first, and then if I really needed to—“

The subtle shake of Sandy’s head gives me fair warning that she’s about to cut me off long before she actually does. “No. Just no. Jared, you agreed to get help. I mean what’s the point of me…” She pauses suddenly and her eyes turn down with guilt, like a child being penalized. She looks ready to be told that she should go to her room, or stand in the corner until I instruct her otherwise. But there’s something else, beneath the remorse: a hint of relief.

So I ask: “What’s the point of you what?”

She takes a deep breath. Evidently she’s been holding this in for a long time and is about to open the floodgates. I brace myself, holding on tightly to the couch in an attempt to avoid being washed away with the tide.

“Jared, you know I love you.” _No. No, no, no, no. This isn’t happening. Can’t be happening._ But I know that tone.

When I was twelve and my dad came home from taking the family dog Harley to the vet, alone, he used that tone. Wore the expression. Like I was delicate. Like he was about to crumble me up like a useless piece of paper. I remember his grim expression. It is mirrored on Sandy’s face right now.

“But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

_And there it is._

I don’t believe it, can’t believe it, but somewhere amidst the denial is the knowledge that I will look back at this moment and find myself unsurprised. This was inevitable. Sandy and I had never been stable, we’d been teetering over an edge since prom night and the last few weeks, my apartment disease, had added just the right amount of weight to tip us.

No one else, nothing else, in the whole wide world exists outside of me, Sandy and the couch I’m gripping so hard my knuckles are turning white. “Then why?”

Why did you say you did?

Why did you lie?

I feel nothing. I will probably cry later, but at the moment I feel nothing. I watch the woman I asked to marry me look down at her hand and slide the ring off of her finger. I had saved up for weeks to buy it. The diamond is shaped like a raindrop. Shaped like the tears Sandy cried when she found out about my illness and the puzzle pieces rearrange inside my head, clicking into place with the sound a seatbelt makes, and I answer my own question.

“You felt guilty.” That’s why she forced me to get help in exchange for marrying her. She did it out of pity. Out of guilt. To clear her fucking conscious like a wipe on a whiteboard. Her silence is as much of a confirmation as I need. And molten lava is bubbling under my skin. I don’t feel numb anymore. “So what was the plan, huh? Send me into therapy, maybe ship me off to rehab, and then bail the second I got better.”

“Jared—“

“How the fuck could you do this to me! I’m in love with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Do you have any idea what a big deal that is?”

She tilts her head slightly and puts one of her hands on my wrist. The touch used to be comforting, but already things are changing and her fingers are too cold for my liking. “Yes, I do, Jared,” she says softly, “which I why I couldn’t go through with it.”

I rise to my feet, her hand slips from my wrist. Her brown eyes grow wide and she looks almost afraid.

“You think,” I begin, making sure every word comes through gritted teeth and stings like a hard slap—because, were I the type of man to lay his hand on a woman I would’ve hit her just then, “that what you did in middle school was bad.” A humorless laugh. “The whispers, the nicknames, you think that was bad? This, _this_ right now, is the worst thing you have ever done to me.”

“Jared—“

“Get out!”

I expect a fight, a protest. I’m actually even sort of hoping for one. Hoping that even if she never thought of us as serious, she cared enough about me to try and fight for us. I’m waiting for her to say that we don’t have to end now just because she isn’t ready for marriage, or that we could still be friends or some bullshit. And the worst part is that if she said any of that I would agree without a second thought, _that’s_ how much I love her.

But Sandy doesn’t need to be asked twice.

She leaves without much fanfare, only pausing to say that she’ll be back for her things tomorrow and will leave the key on the kitchen counter.

I wait until the door slams before running to the bathroom. I don’t have to make myself throw up this time. But as soon as I’m done I stick my fingers down my throat again. The corn muffin tastes even worse coming up but the slight high I get off purging is the only thing that distracts from the feeling of ice water running through my veins.

So I do it.

Over and over.

I lose track of how many times when I pass out, my head bouncing against the tile of the bathroom floor.


	11. Chapter 11

“In the count down to death the question of "why" melts into "when". How much time do we have left, because if I knew what I know now then... Move pen move. Write me a mountain. Because headstones are not big enough.” – Shane Koyczan

 

_Jensen_

_The disbelief passes quickly, washes away like a footprint on the beach that the tide rolls over._

_The guilt has a bit of a stronger hold, as if it’s dangling over a ledge hundreds of feet above jagged rocks and the only thing keeping it from falling is it’s fingers gripping a balcony pole._

_And then the anger—not fun, but better than guilt, better than watching the sky curl up and burn and feeling the heavy weight of a fire extinguisher in your hand, but you don’t know how to use it and now it’s too late. I hold on to the anger with the same grip guilt had on the balcony. Because maybe I won’t turn into a bug on a windshield if I let go, but I’m pretty sure I’ll turn in something._

_The kind of something I’d rather not be._

_***_

Thinking back on it makes my stomach roll. The same way I rolled over to face the wall when the first streaks of light began poking through the windows like a child pokes their mother when they want something—far too persistent for my liking. So I roll over and go back to sleep without so much as opening my eyes.

Wake-up call is at eight.

It’s the nurse from that first day: Katie Cassidy. I’m drifting on the line where sleep meets consciousness and I’m just aware enough to hear her tap on the door, before opening it.

“Morning boys, it’s—“ A beat of silence for which I am thankful, but in spite of my desire to go back to sleep I turn onto my back to see what has silenced the nurse. Her face is ashen. The pale white of the scrubs she’s wearing. Everything matches—her scrubs, her face, and her hair—except for her lipstick. A shade of bubble-gum pink. “Oh my god.”

Her hands come up to cover her mouth and she runs from the doorway screaming into her palms.

I scoot into a sitting position and rub my eyes with my fists. “What the fuck is up with that, Seb?” I ask as colors bloom behind my closed eyelids. There’s no response. So I pull my hands away from my eyes and call, “Seb,” again, louder, as I turn my head to look at the bed on the other side of the room.

Sebastian Roché is not the first dead person I’ve seen. There have been plenty of overdoses—teenagers and early-twenties looking up at the night sky with blank eyes illuminated only by the streetlamps, vomit leaking out of their mouth, a needle sticking out of their skin. But his is the body the one that affects me the most.

His arms are out to his sides and his legs parted, as though her were making a snow angel, and his blood is like roses blooming in that snow. His life leaking out on the white tile floor in red pools, or staining the bed, sinking in to the fabric so deep no amount of bleach will ever get it out.

On the floor, in one of the red puddles, is a rusty old nail that Seb must’ve dug out of his bed before using it to draw two jagged red lines up his arms.

His eyes are still open. His mouth is, as well.

I sit there, staring at him, before more doctors come and drag me out of the room. I’m wearing nothing but my sleep pants, but I don’t feel the least bit chilly as we navigate the hallways.

Some of the other patients have come to their doorways after hearing the commotion. They ask me what’s going on, but the doctor still escorting me quiets them, and I don’t have it in my to answer.

I just slept through a kid killing himself.

As I walk I hear Gen’s voice call out “Jenny? Jensen? What’s happened? Where’s Seb?”

I think she tries to exit her room and run to me, but a doctor or a guard or something, must stop her. Good. I don’t want to see her.

I’m so angry it’s like I can’t feel it. Like whens something’s so cold that it burns. I hate Seb. I hate his father. I hate tiger-girl. And I hate me.

How the fuck did I not see this coming?

I listened to the kid cry himself to sleep for Christ’s sake.

But I didn’t think…and that’s just it, isn’t it? I didn’t think. I never think. I just do things. And look where it’s gotten me. Homeless in a fucking rehab with the closest thing I had to a friend’s body bleeding out on the floor in the room I shared with him.

Eyes open. Head tilted to the side. Face lax. Mouth open but squashed against the mattress.

Suddenly I yank my arm away from the grasp of the doctor who’s escorting me. He looks surprised and he opens his mouth to say something but he pauses because he doesn’t know my name and I start screaming before he can interrupt me.

“How the fuck could you let this happen?” I scream at him. I want to scream at myself. To beat the shit out of myself. I want a fucking hit. But that’s not possible, so I continue yelling at the befuddled man in front of me. “This is a fucking rehab. How were you not prepared for something like this? Or did you just not care about us because we were criminals. Well, fuck you. He was a good kid! He didn’t deserve to die! I cannot fucking believe you let him die! I let him die!”

And then I bring my fist back before I punch the doctor hard in the face. He’s older and in no position to defend himself, so it isn’t hard to knock him to the ground.

I feel my bullet wound stretch with every blow I deal out.

I don’t care.

I feel it rip open and warm blood trickles down my side.

I don’t care.

Gen calls me name, panic in her voice.

Sirens fill the air.

Orderlies come and try to pull me off of the doctor. I elbow one of them in the face and he stumbles backwards before slamming against the wall, his hands covering his now bleeding nose.

I don’t care.

Is this what a breakdown feels like?

Eventually they do manage to pull me off of him. I’m still screaming but it isn’t words anymore. My voice neither feels nor sounds like it belongs to me. I’m not the only one screaming, many of the patients seem to be panicking as well. I see some sobbing and hugging each other. Some looking at me with pity, others with fear.

I feel the prick of a needle in my arm and all the colors of the world mix together. The corners of my vision start going black. I look down and see the red on my skin. For some reason I forget that it is mine. It feels a lot like Sebastian’s. Looks a lot like Sebastian’s. I begin to rub at it frantically with my hands in an attempt to get it off. It’s hard to see where it is because the darkness is leaking from the corner of my eyes and into my actual field of view. All my efforts serve to do is spread Seb’s blood to my hands, which seems fitting enough.

That is my last thought before the black ink seeps into every inch of my eyes and I swirl away, like water circling a drain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'd love to know, did anybody see Seb's death coming? I sort of hinted at it a bit.
> 
> Also, comments and Kudos are love in digital form!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long for the boys to meet up, but here it is, 12 chapters and 17 thousand words later.

“Don't let your luggage define your travels, each life unravels differently.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_You can only run so far before you fall of the edge. Tumbling through the air with birds dancing around you. But it’s only when you really fall that you can admit to yourself that you were actually anywhere near the edge. Until then you can keep your eyes trained on the floor, kicking pebbles and denying to your dying breath that anything is wrong._

_I would’ve._

_I almost did._

_But luckily my fall wasn’t fatal. It hurt like hell, don’t get me wrong. And it left me chock full of bruises and scars. But I survived. I survived long enough to admit that; yes I was on the edge. And no, I didn’t have wings or a parachute or a trampoline waiting at the bottom. And I would’ve kept on tumbling if my family hadn’t caught me. If my mother hadn’t found me passed out on the bathroom floor, vomit leaking from my lips like water from an old pipe._

_***_

            Thinking too much about it makes my stomach roll, like a wave cresting before it slaps the sand. See, the closest rehab to where I live, Graystone Rehabilitation Center, had experienced a suicide on the day I arrived. And the roommate of the guy who offed himself had flipped his shit and started hitting a doctor.

I feel bad thinking about the situation so apathetically but I was so terrified that I didn’t have it in me to care.

And not just terrified about the rehab, which I had accepted with a stoic silence as my mother cried into my hair because seeing the tears on her, and even my father’s face, had left me with no choice but to nod when they’d handed me to blue brochure. No, I was also terrified of my new roommate. See, the room the guy killed himself in was…well; let’s just say it was a bit of a mess. Repainted with red. And ultimately it had been decided that, even when it was cleaned, staying in the room would be too emotionally damaging for the guy who’d started beating the holy hell out a perfectly nice older man.

So guess who my new bunk buddy was. Bingo! The same guy they had to sedate earlier this morning. Though, I wouldn’t be able to meet him until after he woke up and saw a therapist who would, in turn, have to declare him ‘not dangerous’ or whatever, for him to be released.

Or so the pretty blonde nurse who showed me around assured me.

And then I was left in my room to unpack my meager belongings. I was about halfway through folding my clothes and sorting them into the top two drawers—someone else, it appeared, had already moved the other guy’s stuff into the bottom two drawers, not that he had much either—when I heard someone sobbing.

I freeze. It was rec time according to the blonde nurse so it was probably a patient. _Of course it’s a patient, who the hell else would be sobbing in the hallway of a rehab?_ I consider ignoring it. Quite honestly I consider locking myself in the bathroom I’m so fucking terrified, but I eventually decide that I should get on good terms with these people if I’m going to be around them for the next two to three months.

Bracing myself, I make sure my footsteps are loud as I walk outside, giving whomever it is a chance to bolt in case they don’t want to be seen.

When I turn the corner and look down the hallway I don’t see anybody, it’s only once I look lower down that I notice her. A small girl sitting against the wall with her knees drawn in and her face pressed into them like a crumbled ball of paper. She shakes with every sob and I move toward her slowly, holding my arms out in front of me, though she can’t see me, as if she’s a wild dog I might scare away.

I’m so close I could touch and she still hasn’t noticed so I couch down next to her, reach out a hand, and tap her gently on the shoulder.

She startles. All I had seen before was a mop of curly black hair but when she lifts her head up I can see her red-rimmed eyes and the snot running out of her nose like a fountain.

“Are you okay,” I ask, as soothingly as I can. It’s then that I notice the scratches on her arms. Rows of horizontal cuts that peek out from her long sleeves. I consider saying something about them but I figure it’s best to let her steer the conversation.

She snivels, which does nothing to stop the flow of snot, before saying “Who are you?”

I smile as realistically as I can before placing my hand lightly on her back. “I’m Jared. I’m a new patient, just got in today.”

“So you haven’t heard then?”

“About what?”

“Seb?”

I inhale slowly, a sinking feeling in my stomach. “Is he the boy who killed himself?” She nods, unfolding herself. She lets her back lean against the wall and her legs stretch out in front of her. She wipes her nose of the back of her sleeve. “Was he a friend of yours?” She shakes her head and then lets out another sob.

“I w-was aw-awful to hi-hi-him. And now he’s d-d-dead and it’s all my f-fault.” She’s speaking into her knees, her body shaking with each word.

I’m about to deny it, to comfort her. I don’t know what’s true or what isn’t but I do know that now isn’t the time to be pointing fingers. Someone must beg to differ though because I hear a deep voice come from above us:

“You’re damn right it is.”

I look up into a pair of blazing green eyes. They look something like if you were to find a way to set emeralds on fire. I didn’t hear the boy enter the hallway or walk up to us, I was too distracted by the girl who lets out an even deeper sob at his words and I wrap my arms further around her.

“There’s no need for that,” I hiss.

“Oh, and who the fuck are you? _There’s no need for that_. Do you even know what she said?” A beat. I look down with no real answer. “Didn’t think so?” Green-eyes turns his attention back on the girl. “By the way, his dad didn’t kick him out for snorting coke. He booted Seb because he was gay. You were right: he was lying. Congratu-fucking-lations.”

I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about but the girl is physically shivering so I let go of her and stand up. I’m about two to three inches taller than the guy and I tilt my chin up to make me look even more so.

“Stop it.”

He just snorts. “Make me.” The tension is so thick it makes the air heavy and hard to breathe. After a few moments he just nods and says “Though so.” Then he leans down to address the girl, “You may not be the only reason he’s dead but you’re a part of it, a big part, so I hope your fucking happy with yourself.”

With that, he straightens up, brings his shoulders back, and then stalks into my room.

Oh great. I think I’ve just met my new roommate.


	13. Chapter 13

“Someone once told me that the finer points of devotion are about the size of a pinhole, and there are millions of them. And if you could connect each dot, then you’ve got a diagram of what you think you thought you knew, and if you’re willing to admit that you know nothing…you have the blueprint for a breakthrough.” – Shane Koyczan

 

_Jensen_

_You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Not that I’m the type that really worries what other’s think, but everyone worries a little. Even if you think you don’t, who you are is based on who the people around you are. The things they where, the words they say, the songs considered cool._

_You’re unavoidably influence; the way the tide is tied to the moon, whether or not it wants to be._

_In truth, I probably worried more about what people thought than most. Just a different kind of worried than the seventeen-year-old boy that secretly loves Taylor Swift, or the fourteen-year-old girl who rubs skin-colored goop over her blemishes. I’m worried they can see behind the cracks and chinks in my armor. Behind the I-Could-Give-A-Fuck attitude, when you pull back the curtain, not just to the stage but to behind that. To the interworking’s of the clock. You see the rust and the scrapes and the shame._

***

Could this day get any fucking worse? I stalk into what nurse Cassidy had pointed out to be my new room and immediately go to the drawers to make sure all my things are intact and present—you can never be too careful.

And all my shit is there. But so is someone else’s.

I’m really not interested in a new roommate, but it’s either that or I go to Cassidy and ask to be put back in my old room after it’s clean: the one my friend slit his wrists in. No thanks.

I lie down on my bed because my head is still swimming with the sedative and the stress from finding out my best friend is dead and then waking up in a white room with my arms and wrists strapped down. An hour of listening to Doctor Abel tell me I was lucky the doc hadn’t decided to press charges and making me swear hand-to-God (which reminded me of something a person I’d rather not think about used to do) that I wasn’t gonna flip again or whatever and here I was.

I can hear the low murmurs of floppy-haired-guy and tiger-girl talking in the hallway and I roll my eyes. I don’t know who he is but I’m pretty certain he’s new here because I haven’t seen him around and he needs to learn to mind his own goddamn business.

That same thought comes back to me when I see him step through the doorway.

I sit up. “Look, I’m not apologizing. I’m not explaining. I don’t want to talk about it. So you and Liane can go fuck yourselves. Or fuck each other if you like. Just do it outside of my room.”

He snorts softly, then nods before crossing the room and sitting down on the bed I’m not occupying.

I swing my legs over the side of my own bed so that I’m facing him. “Are you deaf, or something? Get out!”

He ignores me. He simply picks up a book that had been left on the nightstand next to his bed. He opens it to the dog-eared page and begins to read. I open my mouth to yell at him again, I actually consider getting up and ‘escorting’ him out the door (I would’ve but my arm still hurt from having the sedative jammed into it so I figured I should probably wait until it healed before I evoked another sedating). Because now, not only was he upsetting me, but also he was touching someone else’s stuff-the guy had serious boundary issues, maybe that’s why he was here. But then, he kicks off his shoes and lies back on the bed, and it occurs to me that maybe it isn’t somebody else’s stuff he’s touching.

“Shit,” I say before I can think better of it.

Floppy-hair looks up from his book and gives me a tight smile. “No kidding.”

“So you’re my new—“

“Yep.”

“So what’s wrong with you?”

He shakes his head but his voice cracks in the middle of his forced chuckle. “You’re not very sensitive to people’s feelings, are you?” He looks me over, eyes moving up and down. Sizing me up like a john before a fuck.

The asshole.

I say nothing and after a moment the boy puts the book down and clears his throat before swinging his legs over the side of the bed to mirror my position. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened to your friend. That’s tough, man. And if you ever wanna talk about it—“

“Fuck you.” I have no idea why his attempt to be helpful bothers me so much. He clearly looks taken aback by my retort but I make no move to snatch the words out of the air.

Maybe it’s because of tiger-girl but more likely it’s because I hate people like him. Not just perpetually happy people—although they tend to piss me off as well, like a bug that keeps coming back and buzzing no matter how many times you swat at it—but rather, people that will take the side of whomever they’re in the room with because it’s more convenient. People who latch on to others’ opinions and then jump between them like they’re playing hopscotch.

He returns to his book and I return to lying on my back, counting the speckles in the ceiling—but it feels so much like the night Seb died that in the end I simply close my eyes and try to think of better things.

It’s less than ten minutes later that I hear a knock and I open my eyes to see Genevieve tapping her tiny fist against the doorjamb. Both the boy and I look up at her. She makes eye contact with him first.

“Hi,” she says, nodding, “I’m Gen.”

The boy actually stands up and walks over to her before holding out his hand. “I’m Jared, nice to meet you.” Gen looks a little bewildered by the overly polite greeting, nevertheless, she reaches out a hand and his large one engulfs her small one. She smiles awkwardly as he crosses the room back to his bed and resumes reading.

Then she turns her attention on me. Her eyes flick back to Jared, as though she isn’t certain how much she should say in front of him. After a beat or two, she sits down on the end of my bed and begins to speak quietly.

“Are you in trouble? You aren’t getting arrested or anything are you?”

“Not arrested,” I assure her, “my stay is just being extended a little.”

“How long’s a little?”

“Ten days.”

She tilts her head, “That’s not too bad.” I nod in agreement. An uneasy silence settles over us before she begins to speak again. “Look, this is gonna sound, just really, really dumb, but um, are you okay? I don’t mean good or great or anything, I know you aren’t _that_ , but just…”

“I’m not thinking about following in Seb’s footsteps, if that’s what you mean.” She sighs, obviously not thrilled at my phrasing but accepting of the response.

“Anyway, It’s time for lunch. You gonna come?”

“Not hungry.”

“No one’s hungry today, Jenny. Just come, okay.”

I’m about to refuse but I look up at Genevieve and she’s look at me with her big, brown, eyes and it feels like the way my mom used to look at me when I was really young, like seven, and I got sick. She would give me that look when she fed me alphabet soup and made it a game that I had to use the letters to spell a word before I could eat them.

Towards the end she didn’t even give me that look when she cleaned up the blood that a john had left me covered in.

I don’t want Gen to leave, and I don’t want the looks to go away, nor do I want to let go of the fuzzy feeling like there are cotton balls in my chest. I used to take that feeling for granted. So I nod and begin to get up.

“And your new roomie can come too,” she says excitedly, clapping her hands together.

I shoot Jared a glare, hoping he gets the hint.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he smiles and says in that big happy voice of his, “That sounds great, Gen.”


	14. Chapter 14

“And you are worth the time it takes to take the time to get to know you.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_So, I’m gonna use a cliché. Like a really bad one. Banal. Dumb. A cliché as old as time itself. Here it comes: Don’t judge a book by its cover._

_And now I’m gonna tell you why it’s bullshit._

_First of all, judging isn’t just a switch you can turn off, and oftentimes it isn’t one you should. Picture this. Big City. Dead of Night. Empty alleyway. Guy in a black hoody. You gonna judge him? Hell yeah! You going near him? Hell no! Same setting, woman with a baby. You’ve got a totally different opinion of her. And you haven’t said two words to any of these people._

_Does it make you vain? Maybe. But it keeps you safe._

_The same can be said about assholes. Maybe there’s some deep-seated insecurity that feeds their need to push everyone else down. Maybe there’s some deep dark secret for the way that they are. Well, there’s always a reason. And it’s never good enough._

_Nothing can happen to a person that is so terrible that it excuses that person acting terribly._

***

            Could this day get any worse? I swear to god, I was barely able to speak after he asked what was wrong with me. I had to take a moment or two to formulate what I would say so that I didn’t sound like I was hiding something. Do people here really just toss around their issues like a volleyball over a net? It appears so because Genevieve spends our walk to the courtyard telling me about her anger problems and her asshole ex.

She’s an open book and I’m a vault in a bank.

Granted, Jensen isn’t sharing anything either, but I don’t really think Jensen is the kind of role model I want in this place. What with the mental breakdowns and rude attitude. Not to mention he nearly bit that poor girl’s head off, Liane, she’d said her name was.

I open my mouth to tell Gen about me but then close it. Something about being in the presence of the oh-so-stoic Jensen makes me clam up. Gen will probably comfort me; tell me that it’s okay, that a lot of people are messed up. Whereas Jensen will probably call me pathetic.

The three of us sit at a table with an Asian boy and a pretty girl with shoulder-length hair. As we take our seats I catch Liane’s eye from across the room and I smile at her. I hope she isn’t angry at me for spending time with the boy that was so mean to her, but Gen seems sweet and the warm smiles from our tablemates give me the impression that Jensen’s brooding attitude is not the norm.

“I’m Jared,” I say with my usual greeting smile plastered on my face.

The two introduce themselves as Lauren and Osric. They’re friendly enough but everything about the courtyard, booming with people but not with energy, seems subdued. I wonder if it’s usually like this or if the suicide of one of the patients has caused a gloom to pervade the air.

The lunch’s saving grace is Gen. She explains the schedule and how things work and, even though I’ve already heard most of it from nurse Cassidy, I don’t interrupt.

I watch her as she talks, the sunlight catching in her brown hair, eyes bright. If I could close my eyes without seeing similar features on a different, all too familiar, girl, I might’ve wanted to try something with Gen. Then I remember her story about keying her ex’s car and I think better of it.

There’s an awkward moment after Osric leaves to get seconds, Gen goes to the bathroom and Lauren begins braiding her hair, distracting her. Then it’s just Jensen and I, and though he seems content to let the silence stretch out in front of us like a long, dusty, highway, I’m not.

So, I turn to him and scoot a little closer. He tenses, but only for a second, before he continues eating.

“Look,” I say, “We’re roommates. We’re stuck with each other. We don’t have to agree but we could at least try to get along. I’ll go first. I’m sorry if I upset you earlier, I understand that you were angry and I can’t say that I know why that was. But Liane has real problems and I think that—“

Jensen snorts sometime around the phrase ‘real problems’ and I trail off.

“You don’t think she does?” I ask, feeling defensive. “Haven’t you seen the scars on her wrists?”

“Oh, I’ve seen ‘um,” he assure before taking a long pull of water from his bottle. His throat is glistening with sweat and it moves when he swallows. “Actually suggested she try cutting a little deeper, or I suppose, I didn’t suggest it so much as imply that she should.”

I stare at him waiting for the punch line. Because there _is_ a punch line. No one tells a girl who takes a razor to her skin because she hates herself so much that she didn’t go deep enough. That it’s a shame she didn’t press down hard enough to finish the job.

There _is_ a punch line.

But I wait.

And I wait.

And none comes.

“You see,” Jensen goes on, “something you do to yourself doesn’t count as a ‘real problem’. She probably just did it for the attention. She doesn’t need help, she just needs to stop cutting herself, simple as that. Forgive me if I reserve my sympathy for the ‘real problems’ that aren’t self-inflicted.” He uses finger quotes around real problems.

I have spent weeks, years actually, insisting I didn’t have a problem despite the chorus of resounding voices insisting otherwise. Just a few days ago I walked out of a therapist’s office convinced that I didn’t have any ‘real problems’. Convinced that it was as simple as the green-eyed boy in front of me makes it out to be.

I don’t know why his declaration makes me so angry. Makes me feel defensive of not just Liane, but myself as well. I can’t explain why the issue is so much deeper than something superficial. I cannot describe the black spider web inside of me, latched on to so many different parts, the thing I couldn’t reach inside and cut out so I had to stick my fingers down my throat and force it out that way.

I can’t explain what it feels like to hate yourself any more than I could explain colors to a blind man. But I know that it is real. And with my anger comes a flood of acceptance. The very first time I can fully admit:

I need help.

I turn away from Jensen, my eyes staring straight ahead at nothing. And then I say “You know, Jensen, by that logic your friend didn’t have any real problems either. Maybe he just killed himself for attention, huh? And do you know what I think? I think you like pretend that people hating themselves isn’t a problem because you hate yourself for not stopping him.”

I should feel bad, but I don’t. I am a nice guy, but not unendingly so.

It’s at that exact moment that Gen sits down across from us. “Playing nice?” She asks. It is mostly directed to Jensen and though her tone is light and playful; his movements are forceful and determined as he gets up from the table, tosses his lunch—plastic tray and all—into the trash, and then exits the courtyard.

“What’s his problem?” Gen asks as Osric joins us.

I smirk. “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing real, at least.”


	15. Chapter 15

“I hid my heart under my bed because my mother said if you're not careful someday somebody's going to break it. Take it from me, under the bed is not a good hiding spot.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_You’ve heard the butterfly affect applied to the future in relation to the past. But the truth is the concept can be applied to the present as well._

_Have you ever wanted your name to live on even after you’ve died—like a phoenix rising from the ashes?  Like Einstein, or Plato, or Justin Bieber (if you’re a thirteen-year-old girl). Have you ever wanted to matter? Most people do. Most people want their lives written about in textbooks and shown in documentaries long into the future when we all live in outer space or whatever. (I have a point I promise)._

_What people don’t realize is that they do matter. They matter through the butterfly effect. Every action of theirs ripples out like a pebble thrown in a pound. It echoes onto eternity, shooting across the sky. Even if they don’t know it. Everything affects everything. And everything last forever, it just might not last in the way you think it will._

_***_

After what was essentially an awkward night, I’m woken up at eight and dragged to group therapy with my new roommate.

Jared had come in at ten last night and I’d feigned the sleep that I never quite achieved until nurse Cassidy knocked on our door to wake us up. Her usual smile is missing. Not only that, but I can tell by the way Jared looks at me as we make out way down the hall that he knew I was pretending to sleep as a way of avoiding him.

Suddenly, Gen runs up between us, far too cheery for this time of day, and hooks each of her arms in one of ours. “Morning boys,” she chirps. I used to genuinely enjoy Gen’s company, but now it tires me. Like a river wearing down stone.

Jared doesn’t share my fatigue. “Morning Gen,” he calls back, his energy commensurate with hers.

I let out a weary sigh before looking over at the pair. You wouldn’t know anything was wrong with Gen unless you pissed her off, which I have yet to really do. Jared is the same, unless…well, I don’t really know what his ‘unless’ is. He can’t have anger issues—he’d have lost his cool with me a long time ago. He looks too good to have a drug problem, his skin has a healthy tan glow that mine lacks and I can see his muscles even under his thin white shirt. No scars on his wrists. No OCD-esque behavior.

So what the hell is it?

“You guys ready for group therapy?”

Jared opens his mouth to respond to her but I cut him off. “I thought you were in the other group and our time slots just got switched for today.”

Gen lets go of both of Jared and my arms and shakes her head solemnly before sucking her top lip into her mouth. “Osric says they’re having everyone in Graystone meet at once. It’s probably something to do with Seb.” She winces when she says his name and looks up to me with wide eyes—waiting to see what I’ll do.

I can feel Jared’s stare burning into me as well.

I say nothing as we enter the therapy room. There are rows of black chairs instead of the usual circle; they face the fireplace. Gen is right. There are about thirty patients in the center. Usually we meet in groups of five, three groups per day, alternating days. Groups one through three Monday, four through six Tuesday, one through three Wednesday. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

There are about thirty chairs set out and more than half of them are already full. Lauren and Osric sit on the other side of the room and the seats around them have all been taken. Gen searches but cannot find more than two seats next to each other.

I smirk. Pity. I suppose Gigantor with have to sit somewhere else.

Then the smile falls from my face. I’m assuming Gen would rather sit with me than him but that might not be true anymore. Maybe I’ll be the one sitting in a crowd of strangers. I shake my head. _God, I feel like I’m back in middle school._

I’m irrationally worried I’ll end up sitting by myself, like this is something that really matters, when Jared says, “Don’t worry about it, Gen, I’ll sit somewhere else.” With that he walks away and I take a seat next to Gen, towards the front.

I almost feel grateful for what Jared did but when my eyes find him I see him seated next to Liane. A comforting hand on her shoulder that I want to run over there and rip off. She isn’t a child. She did something awful. She hurt someone so bad they slit their wrists—maybe not just _her_ but she contributed—she shouldn’t be comforted like she fell and skinned her knee.

“What’s your problem with him, Jen? He seems like a genuinely nice guy.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hot, too.” She adds as an afterthought.

“It’s not so much him as his choice of companion.”

Gen must follow my eyes to Liane because she says, “Okay, so what’s your problem with _her_?”

I do my best to explain the situation. I fee kind of bad revealing Seb’s secret, but I already ran my mouth to Liane so I figure it doesn’t matter if I tell Gen. When I finish I lean back in my chair and watch her, trying to gauge her reaction. I know I’ve told the right person when I notice that Gen’s face is slightly red.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to tell the girl with the anger issues about Liane being a bitch to her now dead friend but it sure is satisfying to have someone to share in the hate with.

“Jensen,” Genevieve sighs, seemingly in an attempt to calm her self down.

“You can’t tell me your not pissed.”

“I am. Believe me, I am. But—“

“But nothing, that girl is a bitch and she hurt our friend. That’s it. Period. The end.”

Gen’s nails dig into the bottom of her seat and I can see her internal struggle to hold in her temper. The seats are almost full now and it’s pretty clear that whatever’s happening is going to start soon. That’s probably why when Gen begins to speak again she does it in a fast hiss.

“You’re right, Jen, you are,” somehow the meaning of those words is dampened by the tone with which they’re said. I brace myself for the “ _but_ being angry at her isn’t going to help anything. She’s clearly sorry.” I honestly can’t believe what she’s saying.

“I think you’re the last person who gets to give lectures on anger.”

I expect her to yell but she doesn’t. Her words are soft and understanding. “Yes, I am. But I’m trying not to be. And getting needlessly angry at Liane isn’t going to help me get better.”

Get better? I actually _cannot_ believe it. She thinks this place is gonna help her. Is gonna fix her. She actually intends to write in the damn journals they handed out and share her feelings in group like it’s somehow going to fix anything.

I’m shaking my head without even realizing I’m doing it. The room around us is buzzing but Genevieve and I don’t exchange any more words. We sit quietly until Doctor Abel and a woman with short brown hair enter the room two minutes later.


	16. Chapter 16

 

***

“If you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself get a better mirror.” – Shane Koyczan.

Jared

_Change is the only things that never really changes. The certainty that tomorrow will be different, even in only the smallest of ways, is terrifying. But even more frightening is the idea that every day will be exactly the same. A repetition from now until you end up in heaven, or hell, or until you simply cease to exist—depends on you’re religion I suppose._

_Change is always a good thing, I think. Even when it isn’t for the better. The chance that tomorrow will be treacherous is well worth the chance that it will be miraculous. And even if treachery does overtake the day like a cloud overtaking the sky and blocking all the sunlight, change promises a chance for a better tomorrow._

_A chance is worth a lot more than most of us realize. Just ask the people buying lottery tickets like they’re guarantees._

***

After what were essentially five awkward minutes of reassuring Liane and trying to make small talk two people enter the room: a man and a woman. I recognize neither of them, but judging by the hush that falls over the crowd they are in positions of power.

The man speaks first. He wears a beige sweater vest, but he’s younger and handsome enough to actually pull it off. His features are pinched tight and the look in his eyes is resigned.

He clears his throat. Not quite everyone stops talking so he clears it again until the murmurs fade off like pouring bleach on stains.

“Thank you. I’d appreciate it if you’d treat both Mrs. Rhodes and myself with respect for the remainder of this meeting. I assure you, this is a very serious matter.”

And suddenly I’m back in middle school on the day I stuck my fingers down my throat for the very first time. I’m sitting in the assembly room and I’m listening to my best friend’s mother tell me that her son is dead. And I’m realizing just how far away Misha had seemed, even when we were standing so close that our shoulders brushed, and how pathetic it was that he was my closest friend.

There’s an itching inside of me that I can’t explain and I know exactly what I need to do to scratch it. I think about asking to use the restroom but now doesn’t seem like the time. Also, the staff here are well aware of my ‘problem’ and I’m terrified that they’ll somehow figure out what I’m doing and catch me in the act.

Jesus. I can’t even sit through an assembly about a dead stranger without wanting to puke. It’s hard to believe that just yesterday I still didn’t truly believe there was anything wrong with me.

The man continues to speak; his voice is deep and soothing. “Thank you. Now, for those of you who don’t know, the woman behind me is Mrs. Kim Rhodes. She is a doctor, like myself, and she is the head of this facility. As you’ve probably guessed, we are meeting to discuss the events that took place yesterday. This will be further discussed in group and individual therapy, and extra grief counseling will be provided for those who need it.

“Right now, Mrs. Rhodes is simply going to discuss the events of yesterday and the repercussions that will follow.”

After that he gives a brief nod and then steps aside so that the woman can take the floor. She wears a suit and a professional look, but she appears genuinely sad underneath her aplomb.

            “Hello, as Doctor Abel just informed you, my name is Mrs. Kimberly Rhodes. The night before last one of our newer patients, Sebastian Roche, committed suicide. We know that some of you were close with him, and we are very sorry for your loss. A suicide in this facility hasn’t happened in over four years and there will be certain measures taken to ensure it does not happen again.

            “The first is that we will ask patients to avoid returning to their rooms during rec time, as there will now be a daily search for any potential weapons or narcotics. The second is that any behavior deemed hurtful to another patient will not be tolerated and will result in your immediate removal from Graystone.”

            I feel Liane tense beside me. Her curls bounce as she shakes her head. I doubt she’ll be removed from the center because the rules have only just been instated so anything she’s done must’ve been prior to them. Still, she seems nervous, so I put my hand on her shoulder.

            “Anyone who disagrees with these measures,” Kim Rhodes continues, “ Can request a transfer to a different at the front desk, and anyone who needs to sign up for grief consoling should see doctor Abel at the conclusion of this meeting.” She sighs and looks over the crowd, seemingly making eye contact with every single one of us. “Graystone Rehabilitation Center is a place where we help each other heal. Anyone who goes against this process is not welcome here. That is all. The first therapy group should remain in this room, the rest of you should return to your schedules, unless you need to visit, either doctor Abel or the front desk.”

            With that, the woman exits the room and doctor Abel takes the floor again, attempting to stop the murmurs coming from the crowd.

 

            “Search our stuff. Can they do that?”

            “We’re here voluntarily, I think they can do anything they want.”

            “That’s such bullshit. I’m requesting a transfer.”

 

            “I heard a rumor that the kid killed himself because he was gay.”

            “Does it matter?”

            “I’m just saying what I heard.”

 

            “Did you hear about that other patient? The one that went bat shit crazy on a doctor, cause he was friends with the kid.”

            “Really, did he get kicked out?”

            “Nope, pretty sure he’s still here.”

            “What’s his name?”

            “Jason or something.”

 

            I turn my head to look at Jensen. He’s already stood up and is leaning down to say something to Gen. The beige of the room’s walls, combined with the sunlight pouring through the walls makes his hair look golden. He could probably use the extra grief counseling, but if I were to suggest it I know I’d get shot down, possibly beat up. Maybe even the same could be said of Genevieve.

            I wonder, not for the first time, what Jensen’s story is. I’ve thought about asking Liane, but to do that seems like such an invasion of privacy. I keep telling myself that he’ll tell me when he’s ready but considering the way things have been going so far he might never be ready.

            He doesn’t like me, and I can’t say the feeling isn’t mutual, but I’d at least be willing to try and get along if he’d just let me.

            “Hey,” Liane says, tapping my shoulder, “are you in this group?”

            My eyes trace Jensen’s movements as he leaves the room, then they flick back to Liane.

            “No, next one I think.”

            Janitors have begun stacking chairs while some of the remaining patients, presumably the ones from this group, are helping to pull the five that they need into a circle.

            “Thank god, at least there’ll be someone in that group that doesn’t hate me.”

            “I’m sure no one there hates you.”

            She snorts. “Jensen’s in that group.”

            Oh. I really don’t know what to say to that. I could assure her that Jensen doesn’t hate her, because, to be honest I don’t think he does. I think he hates himself. I think all of us here do, at least a little bit. But to say that would be to tell her more about him than he’d want her to know and I don’t want to push things with my new roommate any closer to the edge than they’ve already been shoved.

            As Liane and I exit it occurs to me that maybe being in the same group means I’ll figure out Jensen’s story sooner rather than later.


	17. Chapter 17

“We so seldom understand each other. But if understanding is neither here nor there, and the universe is infinite, then understand that no matter where we go we will always be smack dab in the middle of nowhere. All we can do is share some piece of ourselves, and hope that it’s remembered. Hope that we meant something to someone” – Shane Koyczan

 

_Jensen_

_Blame is easy to shift. Sort of like playing tetherball. Or hot potato. Pass it along as soon as the music stops or someone looks your way with an accusing glare._

_We long to shift blame because with it we shift the anger of whoever is blaming us. And anger is arguably even more terrible when it is completely warranted. It dredges up that awful guilt like digging through sand until you reach water. Except that we don’t reach water. We dig through all of our emotions—through the blame and anger—only to discover a thick black sludge that seeps through our skins, into our veins, and stains our hearts black._

_***_

            It’s hard to describe the look doctor Abel gives the six of us as we walk into group therapy. No, five of us. I’d been thinking that since anew person had been added to the group there’d be six now but I forgot to take the subtraction into account. I’d been spending quite a lot of time trying not to think about the subtraction.

            Anyway, the look is somewhere in between nervous and intrigued. Like he’s riding up a roller coaster with a

            _Click-click-click_

            And he’s nearing the top and the entire world is about to tilt. And it’s terrifying but there’s a sort of thrill underneath that. Boiling like the sea of lava that resides under the tectonic plates.

            He looks at _me_ that way, especially.

            I suppose I would too, were I a psychiatrist. Or therapist. Or whatever his official title is. Seeing the after affects of the suicide on me, watching the line of dominions tilt, dragging each other down with a

            _Tap-tap-tap_

            I’m sure he’s very interested. And the pure science behind it all makes me grit my teeth as I take my seat in the circle. Like, they’ve forgotten that this is a person that hated himself so much he dragged a rusty old nail down his wrists, splitting his skin open, creating a river of red down his arm. All they care about is putting his—and our—brains under a microscope.

            I sit next to Lauren. The group is (1) her (2) me (3) Liane (4) a man whose name I’ve forgotten, and (oh great, number 5 is no other than) Jared. My luck, it seems, is on a downward spiral. This shouldn’t surprise me. I can’t recall the last time it was on an upward spiral.

            God, I need a fix.

            It’s been far too long. The physical symptoms may have subsided but there’s still that little, nagging voice, like your mother when you don’t do your chores, except it’s begging you to do something so very much more fun.

            Out of habit, I scratch the place where there used to be healing track marks on my arms just as Doctor Abel begins.

            “Well, first off, let’s welcome our newest member, Jared.” Member? Seriously. Like this is some sort of club. Like the Circle of Crazies meets every other day by choice.

            Jared gives a slight wave.

            “Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, Jared?”

            Indecision flickers across Jared’s features. It’s phrased like a suggestion, and I suppose it is, but to refuse—which is what Jared looks like he wants to do—would be taken badly. Abel would scribble down something on that clipboard of his in an almost condescending way, because you are the insect and he is the scientist and his little clipboard is the microscope, and the other members of the group would look at the floor, the way students do when someone gets called the principal’s office.

            Honestly, I’m kind of surprised Jared doesn’t want to spill out his heart and soul like he’s a waterfall and we’re the pond it’s pouring into. He seems like the sharing and caring type.

            “Well, um, my name’s Jared…obviously. And um, I’m nineteen; I’m from Alfred, New York. And I’m here because I...have an addiction.”

            Abel leans forward, waiting for an elaboration. When none comes he leans back and scribbles on his clipboard. Shocker.

            “So, Jared, as I’m sure you heard this morning, Graystone has quite recently experienced a loss.” Jared nods. “I’d like us all to go around the circle and share how this loss has affected us and how we intend to deal with any emotions we may be experiencing and move forward.” He looks my way. I am a mouse and he is an owl. “Jensen, how about you go first. I know Sebastian’s death has affected you deeply.”

            Most people look away. They fiddle with their hands or they check the clock. But Jared looks straight at me. His blue-green eyes baring into me.

            I don’t know what to say. I can’t possibly deny that I was affected, half the patients saw me beat the shit out of that doctor. So I tell the truth. Why not, right? After I leave here I won’t ever see these people again, so what does it really matter.

            “I was angry.” I tell him. I can imagine everyone thinking _No, really_? So I clear my throat and go on. “I was angry that nobody helped him, myself included.”

            There’s a thick silence in the air for a brief moment, the clock ticks and Abel looks away. He moves through the group.

            Lauren: “I feel really sad about it, of course. It just, makes things a lot more real, you know? Like, everything seems more serious and, like, a bigger deal now. We live in this sort of bubble, oblivious to the fact that people with problems really similar to ours are killing themselves…it sort of feels like I woke up to realize I was dangling off of a cliff.”

            Guy-whose-name-I-don’t-recall-and-I-could-give-a-flying-fuck-about: “It’s awful. He seemed like a nice kid. Damn shame, you know. Waste of a life.”

            Jared: “I didn’t know Sebastian but judging by the reaction I’ve been hearing it’s definitely a tragic loss.”

            Liane: “I um…I’m sorry okay.” Her voice cracks, the waterworks are starting. Dear _God_. I would kill for a hit. Just one. Anything for just one hit. “I feel like …no, I _know_ I was a part of the reason he did what he did. And I _am_ sorry. But I just don’t think that…” She turns her attention on me and takes a deep breath. “What you said to me was so much worse than what I said to him and I don’t think it’s fair of you to blame me just because I upset him when you upset me way worse, and if I’d killed myself everyone would be looking at you the way you look at me. It’s like…you aren’t any better than me just because I didn’t listen to your words the way he listened to mine.”

            Deep breaths follow her speech, as though she’s just run a mile.

            It’s not that I disagree. What I said to her _was_ worse. But I only said to defend him and I think that’s important. I think motivation is a bigger part of the picture than people take into account.

            I don’t respond to her. Not because I don’t have a response but because anything I say will get me booted from this place as Kimberly Rhodes earlier informed me—not that I particularly want to stay but I don’t have any illusions that any other facilities will be better. If anything, I’d leave to escape Seb’s ghost, except that I have a feeling it would follow me wherever I went.

Ah, well, Sixty-six days left until freedom.

 I let the rest of group past in silence, offering the sparest of responses when directly asked.

            Doctor Abel doesn’t push; he simply redirects the conversation to different topics. Liane’s cutting, Lauren’s anorexia, nameless guy’s anxiety and Jared’s…well, Jared’s very careful not to be specific about what his ‘addiction’ is.

            I’m pretty sure it isn’t drugs because Abel mentioned my smack addiction, so there’s no reason for Jared to be embarrassed about any narcotic problem.

            The other big topic is visiting day. Once a week, on Saturday (which is two days from now), family members can come meet with patients and therapists to discuss treatment. That’s another reason I avoid talking—shitty things have been happening to me for so long that they don’t really bother me anymore. But the embarrassment of having to admit that no one’s coming for me stitches my mouth shut like an invisible needle piercing my skin.


	18. Chapter 18

“We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them.” –Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Hatred is hard to let go of, especially when the person you hate is around all the goddamn time._

_Have you ever wanted to crawl inside of yourself with a spoon and scoop everything out like a pumpkin being emptied in preparation for a sinister smile to be carved into it’s skin?_

_Have you ever wanted to light a match and let it burn up all the things you’ve ever thought or felt like they’re pictures of you and a cheating ex-girlfriend back from the days when you thought that you loved her?_

_Have you ever stood on a balcony and envisioned yourself climbing over the rails and falling through the air? Did you ever wonder if the moments before you splattered against the pavement like a child’s finger-paint—the moments of absolute freedom from everything except gravity—might be worth the splattering itself?_

***

            It’s hard to describe the feeling that creeps into my brain as I wait for visiting day. We’re allowed a phone call every Wednesday, but I got here the day after that and my parents didn’t mention anything about visiting day so I’m wondering if they’ll come. I’ll be okay if they don’t, I’m not a child and they’ve already made it clear how much they care. It would just be really embarrassing to sit at one of the tables all by myself from noon to two-which are visiting hours-and have no one show.

            Like a prom date that got stood up.

Like a fiancée that just had his ring shoved back in his face.

I shake my head in a feeble attempt to clear those thoughts away.

            Luckily, the moment I walk out into the lobby my parents are there, waiting for me. My mom, who is prone to maudlin displays of emotion, has tears trickling down her cheeks and mascara gathering under her eyes. My father appears more stoic, but there’s something in the way he looks at me that lets me know he’s missed me just as much.

            Without thinking I go up to my mother and hug her. It is only afterward that I remember to be embarrassed by the display my family and I are putting on, but no one seems to care.

            Out of the corner of my eye I see Gen run up to, and fling her arms around, a man who’s probably her father and a girl a few years younger than her. Sister, maybe.

            I lead my parents out to the courtyard and we take a seat. The weather isn’t great, but it’s not too chilly and I’m too caught up in my emotions for temperature readings to register anyway.

            “Hey mom. Hey dad.” I say, bouncing slightly and biting back a grin. I honestly don’t know why I’m so excited, I just am.

            “Hey son,” my father says, nodding. He shifts in his seat, as though he’s uncomfortable.

            “Baby, how are you?” My mother asks. “Is it nice here, do you like it? You know, earlier I heard that some of the people staying here were criminals. Not to mention the recent suicide. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, after all. You could come home. Stay with your father and I. Out patient therapy can be very affective—“

            “Mom,” I cut her off. I know she means well, and it’s so very tempting to take her up on her offer. To go home and sleep in my childhood bed, and be able to use the internet or watch television for longer than the permitted hour a day.

            “I want to go with you, mom, I do. But I won’t get better from home. I just won’t. I can’t explain it, can’t explain why, but this place really does help. And I’ve made some friends here.”

            My mother sniffles, but nods in ascent before she excuses herself to go to the bathroom.

When she leaves the atmosphere gets a whole lot thicker. Time is taking longer than it should, stretched out like a tootsie roll or a rubber band or a slinky. My father looks around the courtyard at some of the other families before whistling slightly.

Dad: You like it here?

Me: Yup.

Dad: Seems like a nice place.

Me: It is. I mean, the food could be better but…(I chuckle)

Dad: Do you mean that? About the food. Because I could talk with—

Me: No, dad, I was kidding. The food’s fine, it’s all just…fine.

He doesn’t really nod; so much as his head bobs up and down like a buoy in the ocean, bobbing with the tide. Or like the Derek Jeter bobble-head he used to have on the edge of his desk at work.

Finally, he takes an exasperated breath, leans forward, runs a hand through the air where his hair used to be and begins to speak.

“I just don’t get it. I mean _why_ , Jared? You were a good kid. Got good grades. What happened? Why the hell did you do this too yourself?”

I sigh. His frustration is contagious.

“It’s hard to explain, dad.”

“Well, _try_ , because these last few weeks haven’t been easy for your mother and me. I mean, the looks we get at work. The things people say. You know, there have been some bandies of your mother not being fit for teaching if her own son is so fucked up he’s in rehab. I just think, for all the trouble we’re getting we deserve a goddamn explanation.”

I stand up. I try to keep my voice low enough that the tables around me don’t hear what I’m saying, but it’s difficult.

“Well, I am so fucking sorry that this has been difficult for _you_ , dad.”

“Jared, stop it, I didn’t mean it like that.” He’s holding his hands up in surrender, but I’m not in the mood for biting my tongue and locking my words inside until the force of them becomes so strong I implode.

“No? Because I think you did.” I tell him. “You want to understand what it feels like? Fine. Have you ever hated somebody? I mean really hated them. Like they could die and you wouldn’t give a shit, because you just know the world would be a better place without them. Well, imagine feeling that way about yourself. Imagine waking up every morning and feeling so shitty you wish you were dead. Not for your own sake but for everybody else’s. Imagine hating every single part of you. Not just the outside, but the inside too. So you stick your fingers down your throat and you try to throw yourself up because you really believe, with everything in you, that you’re doing to world a favor. That’s what I feels like dad. And I really am sorry that this has been tough on you but I guarantee you that none of that holds a candle to what I’ve been dealing with for the last six years.”

I’m heaving. Breathing so hard I’m afraid I’ll puke. My father doesn’t appear much better. His face is ashen and his eyes are so big and wide that I can see the red veins spreading out inside them like spider’s webs or tree branches.

The dryness of my mouth makes it hard to speak but I force out the words, “Tell mom I said goodbye.”

Heads turn my way as I stalk out of the courtyard.

The next week, my mom comes to visit by herself.


	19. Chapter 19

“Our heads bent towards each other like flowers in the small hours of the morning, while light wandered in like a warning that time is passing and you right along with it.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Secrets are like zombies. Burn then, shoot them, bury them six feet under and they’ll find a way to claw back to the surface—black charcoal skin and the bullet hole in their head be damned._

_Sometimes it happens right away, girls will run from one school locker to another spilling out secrets like sand falling from the cracks between their fingers. Whispering behind cupped palms. Other times it takes a while, drunken stories at high school reunions about all the things you swore you’d never tell because no matter how solid a promise, it will fade over time._

_The sun rises and falls. The waves slap the sand. The stars dance with the moon. And in the shadows all of your secrets come out to play. Trailing you like the dust you kick up as you run from them._

***

It is the second visiting day since I’ve been here. At noon I retreat to the gym, which is empty.

            Nobody mentioned my lack of visitors last week; save for doctor Abel during our individual session, which I hope means no one’s noticed. Even the doctor skirted around the subject, merely asking if it was something I wanted to talk about before moving on to ask about my childhood and my lingering thoughts about Sebastian and some other shit.

            Individual therapy is even worse than group, because there are other people to focus on and the therapist wont reveal any of your secrets without your permission. If you refuse to talk no one makes you.

            When you’re by yourself, if you don’t want to talk they still can’t _make_ you, but they can say whatever they please. Dredge up any old awful memories like reaching into a gutter and pulling up all the black sludge.

            They can ask the kind of questions you can’t help but respond to, the personal ones.

            Abel likes to talk about my mother when I close up because he knows it makes me angry, both for her and at her.

            The gym is silent. When a lot of people are in here they play music, but I’m all alone, and the CDs are kept in a locked drawer. All I can hear as I run on the treadmill is the thud of my feet.

            I think when I run. I think about the fifty-seven days I have left here. I think about how I actually might miss Gen and Osric and Lauren when I head back out into the real world. Despite the lack of heroin and the excess of sentiment this place isn’t all that bad. Free room and board. Three meals. Some good company.

            The clock on the wall reads 1:30 when I hear the gym door open and close. I don’t turn to look. I don’t in any way acknowledge the new occupant, even when his 6' 4" frame climbs onto the treadmill next to mine.

We run for a few minutes, the symphony of our steps echoing, before he says, “My mom had to leave a little early, dentist appointment.” I don’t look at him, but out of the corner of my eye I can see him. His wife-beater and black sneakers. His floppy hair tied back in a ponytail. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s working out. He was in damn good shape when he got here and he probably wants to maintain that. But there are three treadmills, two elliptical machines, a plethora of weights and other sundry items and he chooses the treadmill right next to me. Seriously?

“She’s a teacher, my mom, I mean. English teacher. I’ve been thinking about doing something like that when I finish school. But maybe math instead. I’m in my first year of college, you see—“

“Would you _shut up_?” I finally glance at him. I don’t need to hear about how this place is just a blip in his otherwise perfect life. A bug on his windshield. How in two months he’s going back to college and I’m going back to the streets. Him to teach, me to turn tricks.

And he does shut up.

For a good thirty seconds.

“Nobody came to see you, did they? I didn’t see anyone last week either.”

Oh I am so not in the goddamn mood for this. I stop the treadmill and climb off.

“I’m not saying that to be a dick, I just…” He trails off. I bend down to pick up the water bottle I brought with me and I take a couple big gulps. “If you wanted to tell me why, I’d listen. And maybe I could tell you some stuff about me. I mean, we’re sort of stuck with each other.”

I twist the cap back on the bottle and begin to cross the room to grab a towel. Sweat is making my shirt stick to me like it’s a second skin, running in rivulets down my face and back.

Jared isn’t wrong: we are stuck with each other. But we’ve been doing fine. Coexisting, each of us ignoring the other. There’s no need to change that. I don’t need the human equivalent of a diary. I’m not a teenage girl.

Besides, I tried making friends the first time around and look how that went.

As I’m dabbing my face with the towel Jared stops his machine and walks over to me.

“Look,” I begin, holding my hands up. I’m about to tell him that if he wants to have slumber parties and braid somebody’s hair he should go talk to Genevieve, but he cuts me off.

“I’m bulimic.” He says the words quickly like he’s pushing them out or else they’ll get stuck in his throat. It takes me a good five seconds to process what he’s said and another three to make certain I haven’t misheard. “I didn’t want anyone to know because I was ashamed. Hell, I _am_ ashamed. But I get that if I expect you to be honest with me, it’s only fair that I’m honest with you.”

“Bul-im-ic.” I repeat slowly, rolling the syllables over on my tongue. They taste funny, like metal. I’ve heard of it, of course. It’s the one where girls make themselves throw up to lose weight or some shit.

I open my mouth to say something else but two girls choose that moment to walk into the gym, giggling over something or another.

Jared ducks his head, hiding the expression on his face. Under normal circumstances I would mock him, would tell him that his issues aren’t half as bad as mine and he should find someone else to whine to, but the guy just look so goddam _sad_ about the whole thing that I don’t have it in me, especially not in front of an audience.

So I nod and then he nods, sneaking a glance at me when he thinks I can’t see. And I try to communicate with my eyes that I’ll keep his secret.

I think he’s expecting me to say something in return, share some deep dark secret of my own. Whisper, too low for the girls to hear, the reason my parents haven’t come to visit me. _Won’t ever_ come to visit me.

I don’t. Instead, I flee the gym as fast as I can.

 


	20. Chapter 20

“I've come to realize that romance should be less like a flower and more like an earthquake.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Anchors. Anchors are the reason we can’t just pick up and leave town and drive to where ever we want to go. No real direction. Like a child running through a meadow. They are our house, our school, our job, our family, and our fears. The anchors that keep us tied down._

_Now, I realize that has a negative connotation. But anchors also ground us. They give us purpose. They give us time to appreciate where we’re at, instead of buzzing by places and never really noticing that the flowers that grow on that tree every year are beautiful. Or that the apple cider at that farmer’s market is the best I’ve ever tasted._

_The problem is when anchors hold us to places we’d rather not be. And when they hold us back from chasing things instead of simply reaching for them._

***

She doesn’t come on a visiting day. I doubt she even knows when those are. Besides, coming to see me isn’t something she planned. It was an impulse. I can tell by the way her brown eyes shift when I enter the room. Like maybe she’s made a mistake, maybe she could go, but shit, she’s too late.

Sandy looks as pretty as ever. Her thin white sundress bring out the golden glow of her skin. Her dark hair is long and silky and even from across the room I can smell the hint of vanilla and lilacs I’ve come to associate her with.

“We tried to tell her when visiting days were, but she insisted,” nurse Cassidy explains as we approach. Her hand on the small of my back, guiding me. “You _do_ know her right?”

I nod absently, my eyes fixed on Sandy.

When nurse Cassidy came to tell me that there was a woman here to see me I’d assumed she meant my mother. I had actually been worried, her coming to see me in the middle of the week couldn’t have been a good sign. Every thought I had was a springboard for a fear.

Nurse Cassidy said the woman was alone—did something happen to dad?

It’s raining outside—maybe his car slid and he crashed?

I would’ve seen it on the news or something—except that I don’t get the news in here. I can only watch for a half hour and it’s usually a sitcom or something.

Shit. Dad was in a car crash!

I realized I was being irrational but that knowledge did absolutely nothing to erase the fear. I’ve known that there was nothing lurking in the shadows that peeked out from under my bed ever since I was nine, but that didn’t mean I ever dared let my hand dangle over the edge of the bed when I slept.

Fear and rationality live on opposite sides of the globe.

I was not in any way prepared to turn the corner and see my ex-fiancé staring at me like I was a zoo animal.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Nurse Cassidy chirps before walking back behind the desk on the other side of the lobby.

Sandy takes a hesitant step toward me before pausing. She chances a quick glance at nurse Cassidy who is behind the desk, seemingly filling out paperwork, and humming softly to herself.

“If you want me to leave, I will,” Sandy says briskly, “I mean, I’d understand. I wouldn’t want to see me either if I was you.”

She takes another hesitant step and the rays of sunlight peeking through the rehabilitation center’s glass doors catch on her sundress.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I tell her, almost with out meaning to. I motion to one of the lobby’s couches. We each sit as far away as possible from each other, no part of us touching or even close enough to accidentally bump.

It feels like playing Operation.

“Why are you here, Sandy?”

She’s looking down at her hands. She’s digging her nails under the other nail’s light pink polish and chipping it away. It is an old nervous habit of hers. It reminds of a time not too long ago when I fell asleep next to her. When I forced her to sit on the couch with me and endure my dorky television shows. When we would press our lips together so softly that the feeling we experienced came less from the kiss itself and more from the cannons shooting paper butterflies into our stomachs.

But none of those memories were real.

It dawns on me, as I sit there, staring at the girl I’d seen day in and day out for years, that I was never in love with her. I was in love with the _idea_ of her. The holes she carved in herself to let the light shine through—I was in love with that light. But I was never in love with the dark fog that hid inside. I’d never even seen it.

I try to think of something specific about Sandy that I love and I draw a blank.

I try to think of Sandy’s secrets, any secret about her that only those close to her know and I draw a blank.

And Sandy wasn’t in love with me either. Not if _my_ secrets, _my_ dark fog, sent her running for the hills. She was in love with the handsome athletic boy the way I was in love with a pretty cheerleader. Other people could slide in to fill our spots and our feelings about them wouldn’t change, just as long as their position stayed the same. If Sandy had been a tall blonde girl with a love of poetry, or a skinny redhead with an explosion of freckles on her cheeks and an addiction to Starburst, or anyone really, I still would’ve asked her to marry me.

That wasn’t love.

When you see into someone’s cracks and you want to keep right on looking— _that’s_ when you love someone.

“I, uh, I wanted to see you. I wanted to make sure that you were okay.” Her teeth snag on her lip. “It’s just, you were so angry. And then your mom called and said you were in the hospital, and then rehab, and I just…I wanted to come make sure you were okay.”

“It’s been weeks, why did you wait so long?”

“I was scared.”

“Of me.”

“Yes.”

“You’re scared of me?”

“Terrified.”

I shake my head, baffled. “Why? Do you think I’m going to hurt you or something? Because no matter how angry I was, I would never—”

She waves my concern away with a flick of her hand. “Of course not, Jared. But sometimes the people that will hurt you are a lot less scary than the one’s you’ve hurt.”

She isn’t wrong, so I let her keep talking. It’s about a two-minute speech containing the word sorry approximately five times. And I tell her that I forgive her, but really I haven’t been angry with her since the day she returned her ring to me. I think I was angrier at myself for buying into the idea that someone like her could possibly want to spend her life with someone like me.

I’d seen her as someone so far about me. Unattainable. Like a leaf waiting for the wind to pick her up again. So I’d done what I thought I had to in order to keep her with me.

Sandy leaves ten minutes after she arrived. Her dark hair blowing out behind her when she opens the door to a gust of wind.

I don’t feel ‘better’, per se. But there’s been a certain heaviness to my life ever since I woke up in that hospital three weeks ago. It got heavier when Sandy left, heavier when I came here, heavier when I told Jensen my secret and he began avoiding me.

I don’t feel ‘better’, I feel lighter. Like a balloon a child accidentally lets go of, that begins floating toward the sky—I somehow feel both like that balloon, and like the one who’s let go.

 


	21. Chapter 21

“I've known so many people who've have grown up flexing in front of mirrors and falling for their own reflection as if that's adequate but that's bullshit. Because we only get now until the time we go and if they've only got time to love themselves then nobody is going to be around to hear the sound of their heartbeat echo.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Everyone cares about what people think. Some more than others. It comes from deep down within. That animal part of you that travels in packs because there’s safety in numbers. And even if there isn’t safety, well, there isn’t loneliness either._

_Deep down in our instincts, embedded in our genes, is a desire to be accepted, and to do whatever we have to in order to get there._

_There is no such thing as an accurate “You should never…” statement._

_You should never care what people think of you?_

_Not true._

_You should never judge others?_

_Not true._

_You should never listen to gossip?_

_Not true._

_I can think of an exception to every single goddamn rule. Only one thing is for certain, and it’s that nothing is._

***

The fact that Mondays suck is common knowledge.  For most, this is because they mark the beginning of a work or school week. For me, it is because they mark the day I’m scheduled for individual therapy.

Doctor Abel is waiting, perched in his usual chair, tapping his thigh with his hand as he waits for me to sit down. His deep blue sweater vest matches the color scheme of the room and he’s wearing a pair of thin-rimmed glasses.

“How was your week, Jensen?” He says, crossing his legs.

I’m reminded of my first session with him. When I spat out angrily, “They can force me to sit here but they can’t force me to talk.” He had just nodded and said, “Well, then I suppose we’ll just sit here.”

And we had.

For the first two sessions we had stayed completely silent, doctor Abel reading a novel with a name in a different language, and me, wishing to God that the room had a clock in it the same way I used to wish that in church, years ago, before dad died, when we still went.

Eventually I’d just started screaming at him about how this was all bullshit. And something else about subjugation and stupidity—it had sounded really good at the time.

He had nodded with a too-serious look that gave away his amusement, which had only served to piss me off further. I’d screamed and screamed and at the end of it he asked me the same question he had asked at the beginning of the first meeting and had proceeded to ask at every meeting thereafter: How was your week, Jensen?

And because I couldn’t take another hour of just sitting here I had begun giving him the shortest, vaguest answers I could.

So that was what we did, every week.

And every time I got so fed up that I decided the silence was preferable he would ask me something like, “Did your mother sleep with a lot of men?” And I couldn’t just not answer something like that.

So I would retort, “It’s none of your goddamn business.”

“I’ll take your deflection as a ‘yes’.”

“Fuck you. My mother wasn’t perfect but she wasn’t a slut!” She was a whore. It’s different.

“What do you mean she wasn’t perfect? Tell me some of her imperfections.”

This back and forth would go on until the doctor looked at his watch and declared that our time was up.

“My week was fine,” I tell him, as I usually do.

“Visiting day?”

“Fine.” No one came for me. Again.

“Your friends?”

“Fine.” About as fucked up as I am.

“You’re roommate?”

“Um, fine.” Shit.

I see Abel’s eyes flick up from his clipboard. That brief pause was enough to give it away. He settles back in his chair, the edges of his lips curling the way paper curls when it burns. He knows he’s onto something. That smug bastard.

“You’re roommates with Jared, aren’t you? Our second newest arrival.” A short fat kid that tried to kill himself showed up last week. He’d held his breath until he passed out and when his mother found him—people like him always live with their mothers—he was honestly surprised to be alive. He wasn’t in my therapy group but I’d heard stories from Gen about his exorbitant intellectual capabilities.

Still, I pretend to be unfamiliar.

“Second newest?”

“You’re cute when you deflect. What’s going on with Jared?”

I don’t answer.

“Have you been doing any heroin as of late?”

Goddam him.

I lose it. I throw my arms out. “No. For Christ’s sake.” I exclaim, “Nothing is going on. I’m not doing smack. Gen’s not beating the shit out of people. Jared’s not puking. Absolutely _nothing’s_ going on! Though, I can’t speak for Liane, but with any luck she’s still slicing away.”

Abel leans forward.

“What did you just say?”

“About Liane? Please, she isn’t even here. I thought that, no-talking-badly-about-other-patients rule only applied when they could hear you. If not, Mrs. Rhodes should’ve been more specific.”

“Not about Liane, about Jared. How did you know about his bulimia?”

Fuck.

I stare at him like a deer in headlights, any pretense of ignorance thrown out the window like a cigarette butt.

Doctor Abel takes his glasses off and places both them and his clipboard on the table next to his chair. “He _told_ you. I thought the two of you weren’t talking. He says the two of you aren’t talking. So why did he tell you? Did you tell him something?”

“No,” I insist, almost defensively. Like telling someone something about myself is the kind of thing I should be ashamed of. “I don’t know why he told me. We were both in the gym and he just blurted it out.”

“Maybe he wants you to talk to him.”

“Why would he want that?”

“Maybe he likes you. Maybe he wants to get to know you.”

“People don’t want to get to _know_ me, people just want to fuck me.”

The last part is said in a mutter but I know Abel’s heard it, and only after I finish speaking do I realize what I’ve said. I’ve given away more of myself in the last two minutes than I have in the last three sessions.

I don’t know why it matters so much. Why don’t I want people to know things about me? Maybe it’s because if I can keep them out I can pretend like there’s something worth seeing on the inside.

In any matter, Doctor Abel now knows more than I’m comfortable with. Though he does bring up an interesting point. Why _did_ Jared tell me? _Me_ , of all people. If he’d wanted someone to confide in he would’ve gone to Gen. But he came to me. The person least likely to be sympathetic. The person most likely to blab his secret to the whole rehab.

He sounded like he wanted me to respond with my own secrets. But what would he do with that information.

Of course, there was one way to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have the time, please watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY  
> It's a video about bullying and it's amazing.  
> If you do get the chance to watch it, let me know what you think :)


	22. Chapter 22

“I want to fall asleep next to you, 100 times a night, so I can know you 100 times better before we hit the day light.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Everybody lies. Not always blatantly, but sometimes we lie by omission, or we simply exaggerate._

_When someone asks how you are and you say ‘good’._

_How often is that a lie? Because it was a lie I told for years. So natural it got to be like breathing. I woke up, ate breakfast, threw it up, lied about how I was, went to school, came home, lied about how my day had been, and then went to bed. Wash. Rinse. Repeat._

_And it’s not like my parents ever asked me if I stuck my fingers down my throat to make myself feel better about myself. How I puked the way girls apply makeup. But I was still dishonest. Because there’s a difference between not lying and being honest. And it’s a fine goddamn line to walk._

***

I keep waiting for the fact that I have an eating disorder to become common knowledge. It’s not that I expect someone to run up to me and ask me if I’ve heard the rumors. But there are ways to tell when people know.

They’ll shoot you looks while you eat.

Ask questions when they feel you’ve taken too long in the bathroom.

Comment on how you’re too skinny.

But nothing’s changed. And when I asked Liane if she’d heard anything about me she’d shaken her head and asked “Why? Are people saying things about you?” She seemed overprotective, which was actually sort of sweet. If Liane was my type I might consider trying something with her. But every time I look at her and try to think of her that way I just see her abnormally large forehead and too-curly hair.

Besides, I don’t really feel like I need anyone right now.

I used to think I’d die of loneliness without Sandy around but since her visit I’d realized that I felt just as lonely when I was with her. We never had the kind of togetherness that real couples do.

I’m thinking about this as I crawl into bed, trying to feel my way around in the darkness. Jensen tends to go to bed early. He likes his sleep and wake-up call is non-negotiable, so this is his alternative.

I keep meaning to say something to him. Ask him why he didn’t blab. He doesn’t owe me anything, doesn’t even like me. He doesn’t appear to have any sort of respect for my problems. But he didn’t tell.

Just as I’m pulling the covers up over myself and cursing the fact that this bed really isn’t big enough for me, I hear Jensen clear his throat. I startle, almost falling off the bed. I’d been certain he was asleep.

Suddenly, I have this irrational fear that he knows I was thinking about him. Like I accidently said my thoughts aloud.

“Why did you tell me?”

The question is perfectly paced. Seemingly practiced.

“I told you because I want to get to know you. And I figure that the way to do that is to let you get to know me.”

The moments of silence stretch out between us. For a while, I think Jensen has gone back to sleep. Or maybe he was never asleep.

“Why do you want to get to know me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“That isn’t a reason. People don’t do things simply because there’s no reason they shouldn’t. There’s motivation for everything. So why?”

I wasn’t prepared for this. It feels a lot like an interrogation. I feel like Jensen can see me, despite the darkness. Like his green eyes are staring right at me, piercing me. Like emerald-colored flames are burning up the blackness like it’s oxygen and their tongues are reaching out across the room.

My sheets suddenly feel itchy. “I just figure…I mean we’re stuck with each other.” I wince. That sounds bad, sounds like I only want to know him because of proximity, which isn’t entirely untrue, but I have a feeling that it isn’t what he wants to hear. “I think I could like you. I think we could be friends.”

Oh god. That sounded so fucking stupid I can’t believe it just fell out of my mouth. I wanna be your friend. Let’s be _friends_. I sound like Facebook. Or a Girl Scout.

“My dad murdered my mom.”

The confession is soft. Said without emotion. Maybe thinking about it over and over again depleted any emotion he had toward it. Emotions are like that. Like catching a beautiful butterfly in your bare hands.  You can feel its wings scraping against your palms until those soft, fragile wings are all gone. And now you’re just left with an ugly insect.

And Jensen isn’t done yet. “One of my foster parents showed me how to shoot up. Only once, I mean smack is expensive, but once was enough. When I ran away I couldn’t stop. Lived in crappy motel rooms. Worked shitty jobs. All so that I could afford to buy more heroin.” He clears his throat. “I had a bad trip and I ended up in the hospital. They let me come here to avoid jail time.”

I close my eyes. I’d been waiting for this. _Hoping_ for this. But now that it’s come I have absolutely no idea what to say. This must’ve been what Jensen felt in the gym a few days ago and I feel almost bad for springing it on him like that.

Because really, what do you say?

‘I’m sorry your life fucking sucks’ just doesn’t seem appropriate.

So I tell him, “Thank you.”

And then we let the silence wash over us like a wave crawling up the sand, somehow both knowing that the other is still awake, despite the lack of words or movement. Like there is this presence floating in the air between us that wouldn’t be there if only one of us had our eyes open.

I resolve never to bring up what Jensen told me again, unless he does. It feels like he’s just handed me this very fragile things and is trusting me not to drop it.

A few minutes pass, and then I match my breathing to his.

I don’t remember falling asleep. All I remember is the symphony of our breaths and the low rumble of the air conditioner playing as the background music to our own tiny little world—because nothing outside of that room existed. Not then, not in that moment.

And there is nothing quite like the feeling that you and one other person are the only people in the entire world.

And all the wars in distant countries, and the children starving in the dirt, and the murders and the school shootings and the suicide bombings that don’t hang over your life, but rather, backdrop it like a sinister black shadow, vanish.

I don’t remember falling asleep. But I remember the bizarre, distinct thought that Jensen Ackles had the most beautiful eyes of anyone I’d ever met.

 


	23. Chapter 23

“It's a game! You play, you win. You play, you lose. You play!" – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Sometimes I think that one day I’ll just wake up. Cliché, isn’t it? But sometimes I feel like I’m Alice and I’ve just tumbled down the rabbit hole. And I’ll open my eyes and I’ll be lying under a tree near the river._

_And mom will be there too._

_The real one. The one who spent two hours searching online for a place where she could re-order my favorite action figure, because I’d lost it and the store she’d bought it for me from had gone out of business years ago. Not the one who used to tell me that it was my responsibility to sell my body because I cost so much money to care for._

***

I wait two weeks after confessing my fabricated little sob story to Jared. I even poke and prod Liane a little in group and during lunch just to see if she’ll throw the information Jared’s surely shared with her back in my face. Like, “I may’ve cut myself but you’re a dirty whore.”

But she never does.

The only thing my teasing evokes is doctor Abel informing me during my individual the following Monday that I have very nearly gotten myself booted from Graystone. For probably about the third time since the rule about mocking other patients has been instated.

I’m not quite sure what to do with the knowledge that Jared has kept my secret. I feel like I’m simply throwing it around inside my head, like tossing a ball from one of my hands to the other. Playing with it idly and not actually doing anything with it.

The other result of our little heart-to-heart is that Jared has started to act like we’re friends. He’ll give me his leftover mashed potatoes at lunch and talk to me about the book he’s reading like I actually give a damn.

Sometimes I’ll make a comment in a sarcastic tone, but that I actually mean. Like, “Can you please shut the fuck up, because I can literally feel my brain cells imploding every time you speak—and even more so when you do it in a different language.” To which, Jared will respond with a chuckle and a pat on my back.

Most of the time, I feel so fucking bewildered I just stare at him.

Not that any of this really matters. I only have thirty-three days left until freedom.

This is what I tell myself when Jared sits next to me in group, instead of Liane. I actually feel a little smug about that. There are four of us now. Nameless guy’s gone home, or maybe to another institution, or maybe he died. I don’t really give a fuck, all I know is that he isn’t here anymore.

We talk about the usual things: our progress, our feelings, Visiting day, what we’ve been writing in our journals (don’t even fucking get me started on the fact that we have to write journals, the only upside is that no one’s allowed to read them without our permission, mine is basically full of dick drawings).

I’m tuning it out, as much as I can anyway. Liane’s voice has that scratchy mouse-like quality that cuts through any daydreams I concoct.

My attention snaps back to the conversation when I hear three words I never in a million years thought would come out of Jared’s mouth. “I have bulimia.” The room doesn’t go silent—I mean, people weren’t talking to begin with—but the noises don’t stop. There’s still a breeze knocking tree branches against the window. The heating machine is still humming. But for me it feels like the noises, along with everything else, halts. Or at least, is pushed to the outskirts of my mind.

I see Liane shoot Jared a supportive smile from across the circle and then I see him send it back. For some reason this makes me want to pull out all her slightly yellow teeth. Though, this isn’t the first time I’ve felt that particular urge.

“I um, I said I had an addiction, and that’s true. I used to make myself throw up. I was addicted, _am_ addicted, to purging. It’s sort of hard to explain why but it helped me to feel better about myself.”

Doctor Abel adjusts his glasses, he seems as taken aback as anyone, but only for an instant. Then he lets a calm façade wash over him. Schooling his features, he asks, “Why did you wait for so long to share this with us?”

Jared shares a smile with him too, as though thanking him. And fuck, all this smiling and emotion sharing is pissing me off a little more than usual.

“I was worried what people would think.”

“Why are you sharing it now?”

“I’ve realized how little it matter what everyone thinks.” And to an extent, he’s right, it doesn’t matter what _these_ people _think_. But it matters what they know, and what they do with the things they know, because there are people whose thoughts matter, and you have to build a dam around the parts of yourself that you don’t want to flow to those people. And the more people you tell, the more leaks in the dam, the more likely that information will flow down exactly the wrong path.

Jared doesn’t look at me, but it’s like I can feel him thinking about me when he says, “I mean, everyone has things they’d rather people not know.” He shrugs his big shoulders and I spend the rest of the group meeting focusing on that one piece of the conversation.

When we leave he grabs the sleeve of my gray shirt and pulls me into the showering room. Someone else is in there so steam puffs out of the closed stall and coats the mirrors. It the gives the air a hot, heavy feeling.

Jared whispers so that whoever is taking a shower can’t hear him. “I know it’s none of my business.” I groan inwardly, I know where he’s going with this. “But I think that maybe you should tell people about your parents.”

“Please stop talking.”

“I mean it, Jensen, I know you don’t like me.” _You do?_ “And I know you think that all of this is dumb. And I don’t mean to push you. I really don’t. And it’s completely up to you if you don’t want to, I won’t say anything. But if you give it a chance I think that—“

“You don’t know what you’re talking about Jared.”

“—you could really benefit. I mean I never though this would help me in a million years. In fact, I didn’t even think I had a problem, at first.”

“I mean it, Jared.”

“If it doesn’t work then I’m wrong, but I really think that if you just open up then—“

I can’t take it anymore. “I lied to you!”

My voice echoes of the bathroom walls and the sound of running water cuts out. Some feminine looking guy scampers out of the shower with a towel around his waist and doesn’t even bother putting his clothes on. He just leaves, cradling his clothes to his chest, probably heading toward his room to change because running through the hallways with nothing but a towel beats hanging out in the washroom with a couple of lunatics.

A burst of cool air pushes it’s way through the room when he opens the door.

Under normal circumstances I would probably call after him and say something like “Nice nipples,” just for shits and giggles, but I can’t seem to stay anything.

Jared’s hair is damp after being in such high humidity. His white tee shirt is sticking to his clearly defined chest and stomach. I would actually think he looked hot if he wasn’t staring at me like we were both five year olds and I’d just cut the string of his brand new yo-yo. Like the way I looked at my mother just after she stuck a needle in my arm for the first time.


	24. Chapter 24

_“_ There are times when the cost of truth is so high, we indebt our own hearts to heartbreak. We make love into a currency that can't be cashed in, because there has never been a bank that will give out a loan based on the collateral of hope.” –Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_There are a million reasons to lie, and some of them are actually good enough, but not all of them. To spare someone else’s feelings. To save yourself from punishment or embarrassment. To gain something._

_But then there are the lies told for fun. For kicks. For that good-kind-of-bad soaring high adrenaline rush that makes you feel like a kite on a windy day. Those are the kind that really piss me off. The lies you tell because you can get away with it._

_But they’re pretty rare, as lies go. Mostly, lies are tiny and white. Like little thin whips of smoke you can bat away with your hand. Lies used to exaggerate or underplay or deflect._

_The problem with lies is that, unless you’re the liar, trying to tell which lie is which kind is like trying to interpret an artist’s obscure painting._

***

I wait twenty seconds before opening my mouth to speak. And during those twenty seconds I find myself surprised to be surprised.  How did I not see this coming? Of course he was lying. I don’t know Jensen well, but I should’ve known him well enough to know he wouldn’t tell me the truth.

And _god_ do I feel like an idiot. And I’m sure I sounded like one too.

_I think you should tell people…_

_I don’t mean to push…_

_If you gave it a chance…_

I can’t fucking believe it. It’s the most obvious thing in the whole goddamn world and I can’t fucking believe it.

There’s a small pinch of betrayal, but mostly I just feel angry. I close my eyes and I can see Jensen laughing at me playing like a movie behind my lids. I bet he’s spread it around the whole center too, passing on the knowledge that the dumb, tall idiot bought his made-up little sob story, like it’s some sort of flesh eating disease.

And eventually all the anger builds up into a big bright ball, threatening to blow up inside of me if I don’t let it spill out of my mouth like a waterfall. So twenty seconds after Jensen’s little exclamation I do my best not to yell when I open my mouth and tell him, “You’re an asshole.”

Jensen sighs and rubs his face with his hands, “You aren’t wrong, but I think you’re being overdramatic.”

“Fuck you! Was it fun? Did you and your pals get a real laugh out of it?”

“ _What_?”

“You and whoever the hell else you told? Did you get a real laugh out of getting me to spill my guts and then making me feel bad for you?”

“Jared, you don’t understand.” Jensen is holding his hands up in surrender. His green bright and flashing against the dull colors of the washroom.

I hate that phrase. You don’t understand. It isn’t always in accurate, but it’s always condescending. Said with a little you’re-an-idiot scoff afterward. I’m not usually a violent person, but I want to hit him. Not beat the shit out of him or kill him or anything, just one good pop to the nose. But that would probably end up hurting me more than him—especially is he decided to sue me or something.

Lying and manipulation aren’t crimes, at least not in this context. Assault is.

Jensen must take my silence as an invitation because he begins to speak. His words are both lower and softer than I expect. They actually seem sincere, then again, he seemed sincere when he told me about his parents, and so I’m not sure if I should believe him. “Jared, I didn’t lie to you to make fun of you?”

“Then why’d you do it?”

I accidently spit a little when I say the words, but Jensen has the decency not to mention that.

For a moment I think he’s about to answer, but then he turns away from me and shoves both his hands into his sand-colored hair. When he turns back to face me he’s so close I can see the spray of freckles on his nose and the indecision brewing in his eyes.

“Can’t I just promise you that I’m sorry, and I had a good reason? Can’t that be enough?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t believe you. I believe that you are a deceitful, manipulative, _sadistic_ bastard that gets a kick out of other people’s pain. And that’s what I’m going to continue to believe until I’m convinced otherwise.” I turn and begin walking towards the door. I yank it open, fully expecting Jensen to let me go when I hear him call out my name.

I don’t want to turn around, I want to finish storming off. I want to keep being angry with him. Not because anger is easier than forgiveness but because idleness is easier than making the effort to change something. Unfortunately, my curiosity gets the better of me.

The thought reminds me of when I was fourteen and I came across an old abandoned tree house in the woods. I climbed up it to see what was inside and one of the boards snapped under my weight, causing my leg to fall through. I didn’t fall from the tree house but I did end up twisting my ankle when it slipped through the planks of wood. Later, when my mother was putting ice on it she told me that curiosity was both man’s greatest gift and greatest curse. I told her she was being melodramatic.

The thought makes me smile and it pushes back at the anger—like a trainer at a circus pushes back the lion with a chair and a whip—just enough to allow me to turn around, the door clanging to a close behind me.

“I’m a prostitute.”

The significance of the words takes a moment to sink in. At first they’re just there. Hanging in the air, floating lightly. Then as the seconds pass they amass more weight than a pile of bricks.

I didn’t think I’d believe whatever it was he’d been about to say, but fuck, who would lie about this? Who would take out a canvas and paint a picture that depicted himself or herself as someone who sold sex for money. A job looked at as dirty and disgusting, sinful and shameful. A humiliating admission.

No, you paint yourself as a victim, taking just enough responsibility for your current predicament to make your story seem real. A good guy who fell on hard times.

I’m not near ready for Jensen to continue, my thoughts feel scattered. It feel’s like someone’s just broken the triangle at the beginning of a game of pool. And now everything’s flying directions, bouncing off things, dinging and clanging like an arcade game.

But he doesn’t know that.

“My dad died when I was a kid and my mom kind of fell into drugs. The expensive kind. She turned to prostitution as a way to pay for it. And when I turned thirteen she dragged me down with her. I ran away a few years ago but I was still an addict and I still needed money, so I ended up still being a whore. A couple of weeks ago one of my clients tried to short change me. We got into a fight and in the end I took a bullet to my side. When I woke up in the hospital they found some illegal drugs in my system. That’s how I got here, it’s sort of an alternative to jail.”

His green eyes are wide and earnest. It feels like the first time I have ever seen him and he looks so very…young. My mom always said that children forced to grow up too fast never really grew up at all.

Jensen must mistake my silence for disbelief because he pulls up the side of his grey shirt to reveal a muscled chest and a circular-shaped scar on his side. It’s about what I expected a bullet hole to look like. A circular piece of skin missing. Like a bruise so deep it pushed through your epidermis.

“I believe you,” I tell him. It is the only thing I can think to say.

“I’m sorry for lying before, I was just…” The ‘ashamed’ that goes unsaid echoes the loudest of all the words.

“Are you going to stop?” I ask him.

“Stop what?”

“Prostituting. When you get out of this place, are you going to stop?”

“Stop and do what? There’s nothing else I’m good at. I didn’t even graduate high school. What would I do if I stopped?”

I really wish I had an answer to that.

 


	25. Chapter 25

“I don't carry change around in my back pocket. I don't wear it around my neck on a chain in some locket. I keep change in the tip of my pen and it seeps out every now and then, in spurts of angry ink that make me think, maybe the writing on the wall could use a little revision.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Revenge has such a negative connotation. When really, it’s defined as the action of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands. Whereas, justice—that lovely little word that evokes images of bald eagles and American flags and shit—is defined as the quality of being fair and reasonable._

_Justice is a type of revenge._

_And I’m not saying that things can’t go too far, that there isn’t a metaphorical line in the sand separating payback from cruelty. But don’t look down your nose at revenge like the law isn’t a form of it. And don’t act like it’s something you’ve never wanted._

_Because that’s a lie._

***

It turns out to be a good thing that I told Jared the truth. Not because he’s gotten any less annoying over the past two weeks, but rather, because I’m going to need at least one person in this hellhole on my side, and Gen is leaving today. She’s getting shipped off to some correctional facility to wait out the remainder of her time. Apparently, keying her ex’s car requires punishment as well as psychological help.

The thought of her leaving makes me miss Seb even more than usual.

But nineteen days and I’m right behind her.

It’s Gen’s sister that comes to pick her up. Me, Jared, Lauren and Osric that see her off. She hugs the three of them tightly, giving one last squeeze before letting go and she kisses both Jared and Osric on the cheek.

When she gets to me I’m leaning back with my hands in my pockets. She raises one of her eyebrows at me. When I don’t get the hint she sighs. “Jensen Ross Ackles,” she admonishes, and all I can think is _Fuck, I never should’ve told her what my middle name was._ “Get your ass over here!”

My eyes widen and I take a hesitant step towards her and before I know it her arms are wrapped around me and my chin is resting on her head. It’s only when she gives that final squeeze and leans up to kiss me on the cheek that I realize that I can’t recall the last time someone hugged me.

“I wrote my number down on a sticky not and left it in your room, you better fucking call me when you get out of here, alright.” I’m not quite sure how that will work considering that she’ll be in a jail cell when I get out of here but I nod anyway. And then she leans in and whispers, “I miss him too,” so low no one else can hear it and it hits me just how much I’m going to miss her.

I watch Gen run out into the sunlight, her jacket and hair catching into the wind. I watch her get into the passenger seat of the car and shut the door. And I know that her sister’s driving her to a prions but I still can’t help but be just a little bit jealous.

It’s only when a large hand claps my shoulder and I hear Jared say in the too-loud voice of his that, “She sure is something, isn’t she?” That I snap out of it and immediately begin to walk away from him, because if I’m not careful there’s a chance I’ll end up missing his giant ass too.

I don’t really know why I do it. It’s a Monday so I’m pissed off at the world just a little bit more than usual and when I get in to individual and Abel starts grilling me about the loss of my friends I have to fight the urge to deck him.

And suddenly the light pouring in through the windows is too bright and all the pillows on the seats are too cozy. And everything is just off enough to make me clench my jaw.

“Why are you so upset today, Jensen?” Abel says with that ever-understanding look in his eyes and I hate him even more.

“I just forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“That this place is just a pit stop for everyone else, when it’s a high point for me!”

I catch myself before I say anything else, but I’m worried I’ve already let too much slip out, and soon he’ll be able to sort all the pixels out and have a crystal clear image of my life. I actually consider shutting down again and fucking watching the Doctor read for an hour until he snorts. Fucking snorts.

The bastard.

“Something funny?” I sneer.

“I’m just very surprised that you consider this a ‘high point’. I was under the impression that you deemed this facility on par with a Concentration Camp.”

I’m about to retort when Abel’s pager goes off. He looks at it for a moment, then he hastily pulls the paper he’s been writing on off of the clipboard, opens a draw nearby and shoves it into what appears to be my file before pushing the cabinet shut. It doesn’t quite close all the way, but he’s in too much of a rush to notice.

“Excuse me, Jensen, but this pager is only used for emergencies, which means I really have to go. He rises from his seat and heads for the door, “I’ll leave you to show yourself out.” He calls over his shoulder without really looking back.

When the door opens a low guttural sound makes it’s way through, but cuts off when the door closes behind Abel. It sounds like the newest patient, the one that still lives in mommy’s basement and wears superman pajamas, and I chuckle to myself. Whatever’s going on is going to make quite the story. I heave myself up and begin to follow the doctor, eager to see what the problem is with extra-large when my mind flashes back to that almost-closed drawer.

I don’t really know why I do it. It’s been a long day. My closest friend is probably in prison by now and the other one’s in the ground, which makes my new closest friend an over-sized, exorbitantly happy, perpetually friendly, reader of novels with pretentious, foreign titles.

But I feel angry, and I want to take it out on somebody. So I grad the pen that Abel had placed on his side table, but has since rolled onto the floor, and then I leaf through the files.

I must decide that it’ll be easier to face someone else’s ghosts rather than my own because the file I pull out doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to Sebastian Roché.

I sift through until I come across the name and address that I’m looking for, and then I scrawl the information across my palm, making a mental note to write somewhere permanent when I get back to my room.

_Michel Roché. Father of Sebastian Roché. 775 New York Ave, Brooklyn, Kings, New York._


	26. Chapter 26

“Don't tell me you're not beautiful. You're the kind of beautiful the blind would see if we could figure out some way to give them three seconds of sight.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Have you ever looked at someone you’ve known your entire life and realized how little you know them? Sort of like how when you say a word enough times it will sound strange and foreign to your ears, no matter how any times you’ve heard it before._

_We can know people’s appearances._

_Sometimes, we can even know them well enough to predict their actions._

_But we can never know them. Not really. We can’t ever see the thoughts that pop inside of their heads. The half sentences, and brief images and some things that they don’t even actually think._

_Like when my grandmother died and I got to miss school to go to her funeral. And I thought “I’m glad to be missing school.” And I suppose logic leads that to mean that I was glad she was dead. But I wasn’t. But I couldn’t help but think about how all the other kids were stuck in math class._

_Granted a funeral isn’t much of an improvement. But anything is an improvement over math class._

_The point is, you can spend your entire life with a person and the inside of their brain might as well belong to a stranger._

***

It turns out to be a pretty interesting day thanks to the new kid’s—Curtis Armstrong’s—most recent suicide attempt: repeatedly banging his head against one of the blue circular tables in the cafeteria (the past few days it’s been too cold to eat outside in the courtyard). Which is farcical in theory, but in practice, once his forehead starts bleeding and his nose gets all smashed in, is pretty fucking morbid.

Anyway, after a minute or two a disheveled Abel and a team of orderlies rush in and haul him off to god knows where. The entire time he’s howling like a wolf to a midnight moon.

The sound gives me chills.

Since I’m barely able to eat as is, and the sight of the blood left in small red puddles on Curtis’s table is making my stomach churn, I get up and scrape my remaining macaroni and cheese into the trash before plopping my empty tray onto the to-be-washed pile and exiting the room.

We’re not supposed to spend too much time in our rooms during the day because it interferes with their daily don’t-kill-yourself searches, so when I go there I fully intend to just grab my book and leave to go read it somewhere else, when I bump into Jensen on his way out of our room.

“Sorry,” I mumble, but then I notice the way he’s looking up at me—like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Wide, unblinking green eyes. And he’s rubbing his hands together furiously, like he’s creating friction for warmth when the hallway isn’t at all cold. “Is everything okay?”

He nods shakily, “Is, uh, star-wars-underwear alright? I thought I heard him screaming.”

“His name is Curtis,” I correct halfheartedly. I’ve long since given up on really trying to teach Jensen his name. He still calls Liane ‘tiger-girl’ for Christ’s sakes. And anyway, I’m more interested in the ridiculously obvious subject change. “He’s…well I don’t really think there’s a word for what he is. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I said I’m fucking fine, alright. Would you mind your own business.”

He tries to push past me but I grab his forearm, just hard enough to hold him in place. “Actually, along those same lines. I had something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Shrugging my hand off, he raises an eyebrow as is to say “Go on.”

“Something _private_.”

He seems to get the hint, because he follows me into our room, despite his obvious reluctance. Chances are it’s already been checked for weapons and drugs today, and if it wasn’t we’ll just leave when the orderlies arrive.

“I just wanted to talk about you’re… _options_.” I keep my voice low and try to be as vague as possible. I don’t want to have to close the door to our room, because if anyone who works here sees it they’ll get suspicious.

It takes Jensen a moment to get what I’m talking about, and when he does he looks pissed. The looks on his face makes me flinch, even though I’d anticipated his annoyance, I hadn’t expected anger. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” He murmurs under his breath as he tries to leave. I block his path. I’m determined to have this conversation. “Get out of my way!”

“I just…I don’t think you have to go back to _that_ after you leave here. I mean, I can’t exactly do much research in here, but I’m sure there are places that’ll help people in your position like, get jobs and whatnot.”

“Let me go, Jared.”

“All I’m asking is that you think about it. I mean how can you say you have no other choice when you haven’t even tried to—“

I don’t see Jensen’s fist coming until it collides with my face, sending me stumbling backwards. He’s almost as tall as I am and he’s gained weight during his time at Graystone and the punch stings a lot worse than I thought it would.

I press the tips of my fingers into the spot just next to my eye, where his fist hit. I can practically feel the bruise forming. That one’s gonna be tough to explain to nurse Cassidy.

“I told you what I did because I felt bad about lying, okay. It does not give you permission to tell me what to do. And it definitely doesn’t give you permission to pretend that you know what I’ve done.” He’s hissing. He can’t shout without drawing attention to both us and the room so he’s spitting out his words like they’re poison that’s burning his mouth.  “You don’t think I _tried_. Fuck you!”

I raise my hands in surrender. “That was a poor choice of words on my part.” The look he gives me is so heated I expect him to take another swing.

“Shut the fuck up. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a heroine-addicted, hooking, _faggot_?” I shake my head mutely. I shouldn’t be surprised by the adjectives he’s using. The self-hatred that’s so easy for everyone but him to see. He reminds me a lot of myself in that aspect, but he’s right, I don’t know what it’s like to be him. I can’t even come close to knowing something like that. I am bedtime stories and swing sets and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He is silver needles and used condoms and wads-of-sweaty-cash paychecks. “Then stop acting like you do. If I wanted your help I would’ve asked for it, asshole.”

With that he pushes past me, literally shoving me to the side, and storms out. His anger so hot it leaves a trail of smoldering embers in his wake.

I wait a few minutes, blinking slowly and taking in all that’s just happened. I’ve never been punched before and despite the prickling burn, I actually feel sort of good. High on adrenaline like I’m a bird gliding on the wind, wings spread out wide.

I might even be happy, if it wasn’t for the way that conversation just went down.

 

 

 

 


	27. Chapter 27

“Like an atheist caught in an undertow. Hoping to nothing that maybe he was wrong.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_‘Good’._

_What determines whether or not something you do is ‘good’. Is it simply the effect that the act you perform has._

_If you ask me, I would say motivation. Like, if you pick up a piece of trash someone threw on the ground, that’s good. Helping the environment and whatnot. But if someone pays you to pick up that piece of trash than it’s less ‘good’ because it’s done for personal gain._

_But, by that logic, is anything ‘good’?_

_Cause really, aren’t you only helping the environment because the environment helps you._

_Does anyone ever really do anything to be good. Maybe they do it to feel good about themselves—to get that warm fuzzy feeling that good deeds supposedly evoke. Maybe they do it because they believe when they die they’ll end up standing on a cloud, in front of a golden gate, and a man with wings will determine whether or not that gate opens by looking at their copious list of good deeds. (That’s one of the reasons I never bought into religion, you know. It has to do with my whole motivation-determines-what-is-good theory. Like, if you’re gonna go to church and perform good deeds and shit. You should do them because God wants you to, because_ you _want to, not because of that goddamn gate, or where you’ll go if it doesn’t open)._

_The point is that when you look at things the way I do, ‘good’ is about as realistic as horses with horns on their heads._

***

He just won’t leave it the fuck alone.

And I get that he wants to help. I _do_. I’m sure he adopts abandoned puppies and reads to kids with cancer in his spare time. And that’s fucking great.

But I’m not a puppy and I don’t have cancer and I don’t need his goddamn help!

And while I do regret how angry I got at him, and the fact that I hit him, telling him to mind his own business was a lot easier than explaining the real reason he can’t help me. The same reason this place—the nicest place I’ve probably ever stayed in—is a hellhole, and I’m counting the days until I can leave: Smack.

I’m an addict, and I know that, and I hate it, and I hate my mom and I hate myself.

And I quit, right? I’ve detoxed, and it should be easy now, right?

But that ever-present feeling, like my skin is too tight and the air is too thin and if I just have a hit it’ll all go away, is still here, trailing me like a shadow. Only gone when I’m completely focused on something else, and I can’t spend my life completely focused all the time.

But I can’t admit that to him. Can’t admit that I’m on my knees for a goddamn  substance. I will tell him to keep his nose out of my shit until I run out of breath to speak with, but I can never tell him that.

Still, it gets almost fucking tempting when he doesn’t take the hint (the rather obvious, fist to the face, hint) and back the fuck off!

But it really comes to a head about a week later—nineteen days left for me here, if you’re keeping track, because I sure as hell am—when I’m sitting alone at lunch because Osric has since gone home and Lauren is in her Individual session with Abel. I see Jared enter the room, he’s too big not to notice. He seems to be heading toward tiger-girl, who’s smiling at him, but then his eyes meet mine and he turns to come sit by me.

I have no idea why, because I’m sure the look in my eyes is anything but welcoming, and the almost-faded bruise on _his_ eye looks painful enough to be a deterrent.

He sits down across from me, his legs are so long that his jean-clad knees brush mine under the table.

“Good afternoon,” he says. Much too cheery for someone I punched a week ago and have been ignoring ever since. Like, I did everything I could, short of requesting a room change—though I did consider that. Even star-wars-underwear would be a better roommate than this.

I don’t respond to his greeting, as you can probably guess.

Actually, I make to get up and throw away the remainder of my food.

“I want you to listen to me,” he says simply, as I pile my rolled up napkin and empty soda can onto my tray. He says it as though it’ll actually make a difference what he wants me to do.

“I want you to leave me alone,” I mutter.

“I have no reason to do that.”

“And I have no reason to listen to you.”

Jared takes a swig of his water bottle so he’s unable to smile, but there’s a grin in his eyes, and they never leave me. He puts the bottle down and screws the cap back on. “I beg to differ.”

I’m about to walk away, but that one catches my interest. I realize he’s probably going to say something along the lines of _I want to help you and that should be reason enough_ , but I’m just curious enough to stick around. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. I will deny to my dying day that I enjoy the feeling it gives me to know that he still wants to help me even after I’ve punched him. That I like the way he talks to me, like I’m someone worth talking to. Someone worth caring about.

“I told Cassidy I tripped and hit my eye on the wood part of the bed,” he continues on, “I don’t think she believed me. But I think she’d have no problem believing it if I told her you punched me, and that I didn’t say anything because I’m afraid of you.”

That conniving bastard. Though I must admit I’m impressed, it doesn’t stop me from wanting to add to the vestige of the damage I did to his face. For a moment I think he planned this from the moment he cornered me in our room, but I know that there’s know way in hell. He lacks the guile necessary for something like that.

“I’m sure Liane would back my story.” I know he adds the part about her just to piss me off even more. Just to push me a little bit further. To make me feel that familiar pinch whenever I think of what happened to Seb.

“Doesn’t she go home today?” I ask, seemingly calm. But my mind is racing in an attempt to find a way out of this. If he tells them I punched him I’ll get another ten extra day here at _least_. I can last much longer without shooting up, or I’ll start scratching at my skin until I peel it all off.

“Yes, that’s why we have to do this now.”

“What do you want me to do? Huh? Beg you not to?”

“I want you to listen.”

I snort and continue to walk away, dumping my tray on the way out of the cafeteria. Jared follows me, his smug, condescend expression gone. He calls after me but I don’t stop, so he rushes to catch up with me as I walk out of the cafeteria and into the hall.

He’s breathing a little heavy but his words are still clear. “Did you hear what I just said to you?”

“You’re bluffing.”

I don’t bother to stop walking. Jared doesn’t respond to my accusation but he doesn’t stop following me either. People that pass us give us strange glances, like they can feel the tension laden in the air, like it’s a real palpable thing, a rubber band stretched so far out it’s in danger of snapping.

After a while I can’t take it anymore.

I turn on him “Do you _want_ another hit?” I hiss at him.

“No, but I think you do,” he whispers. And fuck, am I really that transparent. “I think that’s why you got so angry. Why you hit me. You don’t think you can live without it, don’t you?”

He’s right. Normally I feel annoyance when he tries to talk to me, to _help_ me. But when he’s hitting the nail on the head like this, I feel anger like a river of fire in my veins.

“Why do you care?” I ask him.

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re a good person.”

I scoff at that last sentence. “You don’t even know me.”

“Who does?”

And  I have honestly no idea how to respond to that, so I just walk away, praying to a god I don’t believe in that he won’t follow me this time.


	28. Chapter 28

“I know you have to care about the world. Because it doesn't care about you.” – Shane Koyczan

Jared

_‘No’_

_It’s a word that’s a lot scarier than it’s ever been given credit for. Because there are some questions in life that, if answered with anything other than an affirmative, send everything else crumbling down, like rocks riding a river of red lava down the side of a volcano._

_Rejection is one of those things. The worst they can say is no, right? Well, it’s true. But don’t underestimate how much that can hurt. To ask, “Do you want me?” And hear a resounding chorus of_

_“You’re not worth having.”_

_Or_

_“I’d rather have somebody else.”_

_No. No. No. No. No._

_Two letter. One syllable. More emotions than can be counted._

_It’s fucking terrifying to put yourself out there like that. Especially if your self hate has been there for longer than you can remember._

***

He won’t just fucking listen. Just once, I just need one chance to talk to him when he’s being receptive so I can feel like he at least heard me. Like I wasn’t shouting down an empty hallway in the dead of night or praying for a rainstorm in the middle of a desert.

I’m thinking about this as I walk down to the lobby, I’m the only one who’s come to see Liane off and the thought makes me sad. Not the ‘someone close to you died’ kind of sad, but more like the ‘spending your birthday alone because none of the other kids wanted to come’ sad that’s actually, in a strange way, kind of worse.

So I try to distract her.

“So your free now, huh?” I say, smiling down at her.

She returns the grin and nods, her white teeth on display and her ponytail bouncing up and down as she does so. “Yup, no more long-ass therapy sessions.”

“No more shitty cafeteria food.”

“No more ass-hat heroine addicts.” That one causes me to flinch. It’s not that Jensen’s been particularly nice to Liane, and she does have a right to dislike him, but something about hearing her badmouth him unsettles me—like a gust of wind unsettles fallen leaves.

“Yeah, sorry about blowing you off at lunch today.” I say, shrugging. “I just needed to..”

I don’t have to finish my sentence. She nods, like she understands. The autumn sun is setting outside and while I’ve never thought that Liane was particularly beautiful, she looks it now, with the oranges and pinks outlining her purple sweater, and the makeup that I’ve never seen her wear before.

I could never think of Liane that way. And even if I could, her boyfriend is the one coming to pick her up. But I do genuinely like her, and I hope things work out for her after she leaves here.

“Why do you bother?” She asks, blowing out a puff of air, “It’s not like he wants your help, or even appreciates it. Why not just leave him be.”

“Because I care about him.” I say simply. Hoping she’ll accept the answer at face value, rather than dissecting everything the way Jensen does. Over analyzing. Picking it apart, down to it’s bare bones, until nothing anyone does ever makes sense.

I have never hated the word ‘why’ as much as I do when I talk to him.

“Oh you do, do you?” Liane is raising an eyebrow at me, amusement filtering into her voice.

“Yeah I do.”

She just smiles at me, like I’m a child and she knows something I don’t like I’m saying something remarkably adorable. A kindergartener asking his mom how long she thinks it’ll take for Santa to receive his wish list. I have accept her to rub my head, mussing up my hair, like I’m her little brother.

But I don’t quite get it. What the smug look is. What she knows that I don’t.

And I don’t have time to ask because before I know it a car is pulling up outside, blocking the sunset.

Liane must see it too because she leans up and hugs me goodbye, and promises she’ll come see me on visiting day sometime soon. And then she pulls away and runs over to her boyfriend.

He’s fairly tall, but not as tall as I am. And he wears glasses, but not the dorky kind. Seeing one and then the other, I could never have pictured them together. But seeing them together and they fit like the gears inside of a clock.

After Liane hugs and kisses him hello, and sends one last wave to me, she steps forward so that all I can see is their silhouettes in the sunlight. And she says something to him that I can’t hear, and then he picks up her wrist and presses it to his lips. Kissing her scars.

And suddenly it clicks, like a seatbelt into place, and I know what Liane was smiling about. And at first I think that she was wrong, that I couldn’t possibly be…but the more I think about it the righter it starts to seem and the grin on my face stretches.

I turn and walk through the hallways with an amount of purpose commensurate to that of a mother at Shop Rite (if you’ve ever been to Shop Rite, or ever you’ve ever had a mother, you know what I’m talking about). I send a smile to Lauren when I pass her, but I don’t stop to say hello and ask how her individual session today went, like I usually would.

I don’t dare pause to think about what I’m doing because I know that if I think about it I’ll talk myself out of it. Make a mental checklist of all the reasons this is a shitty idea.

First I check the bedroom, because it’s closest, but it’s empty.

The second place I check is the gym, and he’s there. Running on the treadmill, like he always does when he’s frustrated or when it’s visiting day and no one’s come for him again. That though just makes me walk faster.

He’s the only one in the gym and there’s no music playing. So he hears it when I open the door and he turns to look at me, pausing the machine.

I see the frustration in his eyes and I smirk as he gets off the treadmill and starts to shout. “Look, Jared, I’m not in the fucking mood right now okay.” I don’t even hesitate, and his frustration grows. Sweat is running down his forehead and has soaked through his white shirt. “If you’re wanna tell Cassidy, or Kim Rhodes, or who-the-fuck-ever go right ahead. I don’t give a—“

I slam him against the wall in between the treadmill and the elliptical machines and I press my mouth to his. It takes like salt and heat. It’s a little scratchier than I’m used to—Sandy’s skin was always so smooth. But it’s good nonetheless. It churns something red and hot inside of me that being with Sandy never did. He doesn’t taste like lip gloss or vanilla moisturizer. He tastes like _him_. And it’s intoxicating.

It’s definitely something I wouldn’t mind doing again.

When I pull away from him he stares up at me. Wide-eyed. Open-mouthed. Beautiful.

“I want—“ I pause, correcting myself, “I _need_ you to listen to me, Jensen. Because I care about you. And I care about you because you’re a person worth caring about. And I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you that before, but it’s true.”

With that, I turn and make to leave the gym.

I get halfway across the smooth gym floor before he yanks me back and presses his mouth to mine.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took 38,000 words but they finally kissed!!


	29. Chapter 29

“When something's painful, you just avoid it. Why bother dredging up the past if it's nothing but bad stuff?” - Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Everything you do is based off what you’ve done. What has happened to you. The story pages that have been written in permanent black ink, and worst of all, written almost entirely by someone other than yourself._

_My therapist says that’s a bad attitude to have. Insists that we have to believe that we hold the pen (at least most of the time) or we lose all hope for writing ourselves a happy ending._

_I’m fairly certain my therapist was a girl in a past life._

_Point is, the past isn’t something we can erase. It is the kind of ghost neither priest nor psychic can banish with neither holy water nor a Ouija board._

***

It seems Jared and I have come across a conversation we’d both rather avoid: The infamous what-the-fuck-happens-now conversation. Although, it isn’t like we really need it.

For one, nothing much has really changed. We don’t tell anybody. We don’t kiss or call each other cutesy nicknames or whatever it is that people in relationships do. During the day, aside from a few heated glances, nothing has changed. It’s only at night, behind closed doors, moaning into pillows, that I do with him the things people used to pay hundreds of dollars to do with me.

The lack of payment should probably make me feel like I’m missing out. But I don’t. It’s strange to think about, but Jared is the only person who has wanted to have sex with me only _after_ getting to know me. Something about that knowledge makes the experiences feel almost suspended in infinity. Like the sun dangling on a string. It makes the sex feel bright in the same way that money used to make it feel cheap.

The second reason we are far from in need of the talk is that none of this is really real. This place, Graystone, is like a little bubble. Nothing inside of this place will make it out intact. Every relationship formed here is a foxhole relationship.

Jared would rather be fucking the fiancé who left him when she found out he had an eating disorder (or so I can gather from what he’s shared in group), and I would rather be shooting up in a back alley, watching the stars spin and the lights swirl like a disco ball is dancing with the moon.

As far as I’m concerned, this relationship ends when my time in rehab is up, ten days from now. Jared seems to think differently.

Like I said, we haven’t had any sort of conversation about it yet. But there’s a comment here and there that makes my heart catch its breath.

“The food here tastes like shit. There’s this great restaurant like ten minutes away from my apartment, we should try it sometime.”

“You’ve never seen _Doctor Who_? Dude, you’re so missing out! We need to rectify this travesty ASAP!”

I think about correcting him, explaining that there won’t be any restaurant dates or TV show marathons. That I’m going to float away like a flower petal caught on a breeze as soon as the doors are open. But I don’t want time to resume. I don’t want to leave this frozen little pinprick in infinity. I don’t want to snap the thin white string that’s keeping everything from shifting back to the way it was.

I don’t want to stop being with him. He’s almost as addicting as the smack is. _Almost_.

Speaking of, god I need a hit.

Ten days. I made it through months of this shit. I can do ten more days.

I let out a puff of air as I take my seat in group. There are four of us now, Liane’s gone (thank fucking god) but there’s a new guy, Mark Pellegrino. By all appearances the guy’s normal; he has one of those blending faces. The ones you could pass by a million times and never remember. I only bothered to remember his name because the guy’s got a grin just on the wrong side of creepy and there’s something vaguely familiar about the emptiness in his eyes—quite possibly because I’ve seen it in the mirror.

He looks too good for this tiny, little, happy, rehab. He looks like he belongs in a tuxedo with blood-colored tie. He begins to speak and I somehow know what his voice will sound like before its low timbre fills the air.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

This can’t be happening. It literally _cannot_.

I tense, every muscle in my body rigid like the gears rusted so much they got stuck. Out of the corner of my eye I see Jared glance at me with concern as the man speaks.

“My name’s Mark Pellegrino. Don’t bother trying to remember it; you won’t need to use it for long. I’m here because of an…unfortunate incident that took place in my office the other day. I lost my temper with a client and—despite the obvious fact that the little shit deserved it—I’ve been forced to do thirty days in _this_ shit-hole to prove that I don’t have anger issues.” He brushes off his already clean shoulder, as if even the air in this place is too far beneath him to touch his cashmere sweater. “I suppose I could’ve paid to go somewhere better, but I refuse to dish out money to pay for mandated therapy, of which, I am in no need.”

He looks us over one by one, eyebrow raised slightly. Lauren shrinks back in her seat. Even Abel looks unnerved. Jared doesn’t though. He casts one last worried glance in my direction before straightening up in his seat, chin tilted slightly.

I have never wanted to kiss anyone so badly before.

I needed that tiny display of bravery to get me through Pellegrino’s examination of me. The superior gleam in his challenging eyes. And then, there it is. The recognition.

His mouth curls up, like a scroll or a joint. The same smile he wore when he looked down at the whore kneeling under his desk, sucking his dick. I made quite a bit of cash off of Mr. Pellegrino—when I was eighteen and first starting out on my own—the lawyer with the blood-colored tie and the curled smile.

It’s all I can think about right now; panic pervading my body like ice water. And he’s thinking about it too, I can tell. And even if I couldn’t tell, I never would’ve missed the wink he gave me.

Jared must not miss it either, and he must start to get the picture, or at least a part of it, because he reaches over and curls his fingers between mine, intertwining us, not pulling away when I squeeze so hard it must hurt. It is the most affectionate we’ve ever been in public and I should be annoyed or worried about what people will think, but right now I need something to hold on or I’ll float up toward the sky until I exit the atmosphere and suffocate from lack of air.

I don’t speak much for the rest of support group. When I’m asked a question, Jared talks for me, the way I talked for Seb all those weeks ago. And when it’s over I bolt like there are wolves nipping at my heels, howling at the moon the way star-wars-underwear howled as the men in white suits dragged him through the lobby, doped him up, stuffed him into a straight jacket and drove him off to an asylum.

 

 


	30. Chapter 30

“We come from the mentality that rarely sees the horror in symmetry, or the beauty in non-conformity.”

_Jared_

_Everything changes when somebody wants you. It’s sort of hard to explain. I suppose that Sandy wanted me, but she didn’t want me, not really. She wanted a cardboard cutout of me—which at the time, I thought was just fine because I felt like a cardboard cutout._

_Like I was perpetually standing in a funhouse mirror and the beautiful boy that people saw was just a distorted reflection of me that stretched out my body like a piece of taffy to make me look thin._

_It’s different, taking away the mirror and the purging and clearing up the fog. I’d expected to be standing all alone, and I’d been okay with that because if I kept standing in the fog I was certain I would choke on it. But I wasn’t alone. I’d found someone who wanted me. A breath of fresh air._

***

            It seems like every time I ask Jensen a question it only elicits anger or avoidance. Two days after Mark Pellegrino enters Graystone and I still don’t know who he is to Jensen—though I have a fairly good guess, and it makes my stomach turn.

            I stopped asking after a while because I don’t want Jensen to start avoiding me the way he usually does when I won’t get off his case. Not with the creepy fucker in the building, waiting like a tiger to pounce.

There’s something about Pellegrino that reminds me of a child that used to pull the wings off of insects. Except that he isn’t a child, and I’m fairly certain that in his mind, Jensen is the insect. That combined with the fact that the thought of he and Jensen pressed up against one another, sinking into each other like sand or colliding like trains, even if it was sex for money, makes me grind my teeth.

Nowadays, being away from Jensen for more than a couple of minutes makes me tap my fingers impatiently. I used to take forever in the shower because it wasn’t my electricity bill the extra time would be showing up on. Now, I’m in and out in less than five minutes.

My mother can sense it too. It’s visiting day, three days after the arrival of Mark Pellegrino. She’s midway through talking about something or other—probably about one of her students—when she stops all of a sudden and places her small hand over my tremulous one.

“You haven’t heard a word I said, have you?” Her tone isn’t accusatory and she’s smiling patiently at me, so I can tell she isn’t taking it personally.

“Sorry ma.”

“Don’t be, dear. I’m sure you have a lot on your mind.” I look up at her. It isn’t the first time I’ve worried about informing my parents of the new relationship forming in my life. Not that you can really call what Jensen and I have a relationship—I don’t actually know what the hell it is, but I do hope it lasts longer than the remainder of our time here, so I will have to tell her and dad about it eventually.

I know my mother will support me, even if she’s disappointed in me. My father, on the other hand…But when I think too hard about it, I realize that watch my mother force a smile to hide her disgust, like she does whenever she eats something my father has tried to cook, might be the worst of the two.

“You’ll be going home in a few weeks, have you thought about what you want to do then?” She doesn’t remove her hand from mine.

“Well, I’ll still be going to therapy once a week. But, I suppose I’ll go back to school, look for another part time job.” I’d had to quit my old one when I came here; mopping the floor at McDonalds hadn’t been that big a loss.

“Get your life back on track. Get ready for the whole house, wife, kids, white picket fence shebang.” She says it lightly, but it still makes me wince and I can feel my face scrunching as I do so, and she frowns, finally pulling her hand away. “I know that you thought you’d be spending your life with Sandy. I didn’t mean to try and rush you into—“

“It’s okay, mom. It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

I pause, looking around the room. There are other patients meeting with their families. Talking, laughing, hugging, some even crying. It’s a public place; I really shouldn’t do this here. But there’s something safe about public places. Something comforting about the knowledge that my mother isn’t the type to make a scene. And I need that, however unfair it may be to her.

“I just wanted to know, mom: How would you feel if I, um, were to be, uh, I guess _seeing_ is a good way to put it, someone from here?”

“From Graystone?”

“Yes.”

She looks around the room at the other patients. My mother is a wonderful woman, loving, supportive. But she wouldn’t lie to me. Not even to spare my feelings. In this moment I cannot decide whether I consider that one of her virtues or one of her flaws.

Finally, her brown eyes turn back to me. “I think it’s a bit soon after Sandy, but…well, as long as she’s a nice girl, I suppose—“

“That’s the other thing,” I have the push the words out quickly, because they’re expanding and soon they’ll be stuck in my throat, clogging my airways. “How would you feel if it wasn’t a girl?”

I hold my breath as my mother leans back, allowing my words to sink in. I wonder if she’ll ask for clarification. She’s a smart enough woman to ascertain the implication of my words, but some things need to be said flat out for them to be believed or accepted.

I watch it sink into her, soaking through her skin like water into a sponge. She inhales deeply before leaning forward again. She looks up at me and suddenly I don’t need her to speak, I already know. And I can’t believe I ever though otherwise. She is my mother and I am her son.

“Well, as long as he’s a nice boy.” She tells me, winking, but then the corners of her smile turn down. “Though, I have to be honest with you, sweetie, you’re father may not share my opinion.”

But in that moment it didn’t matter. I felt like shouting from the rooftops.

We talk a bit more about inconsequential things, before she hugs me goodbye, squeezing just a little tighter than usual. I wave to her as she leaves and it isn’t until I’m walking through the halls, my footsteps echoing that I realize I’d forgotten all about Jensen.

And I realize this because when I walk by the washroom the door is closed and two voice sliver out from underneath it like light poking through cracks: Jensen’s and Mark Pellegrino’s.


	31. Chapter 31

“The only reason our hindsight is 20/20 is because we’ve had too much practice looking over our shoulders. As if we could expect to find behind us anything other than the mistakes we made.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Addiction is hard to explain._

_The best way I can describe is this: procrastination times a million. A lot of people procrastinate. It’s so easy to say_

_Yeah, I’ll do it tomorrow_

_But then tomorrow comes and the temptation to do anything other than what you have to weighs you down like iron chains until you’re just to tired to move anymore._

_And it’s sort of like dieting times a million too. The moment you start, it’s like,_

_But it’s a holiday_

_Or_

_I’m at a party_

_Or_

_I was really good this week_

_Excuses. Excuses. Excuses._

_But addiction is stronger. Like a magnet and you’re made of metal. And pretty soon you give in and your addiction might as well be who you are. An immutable constant._

_And people will look down their noses and sneer at you, “Why don’t you just quit?” But what they don’t understand is I have quit._

_I’ve quit a million times._

***

I saw it coming, if I’m being honest. Jared couldn’t look over my shoulder for me forever. And when he left to go see his mother, I knew it was a perfect window for Mark. So did Jared, because he invited me to come meet his mother. But I said no.

I did what I always did. I walked to the gym turned on the treadmill and ran. I am in better shape now than I have been in my entire life. Was it dumb? Probably. But I wasn’t gonna let that bastard’s presence run my life. I didn’t feel like the same little boy I’d been when he handed me that crisp wad of green crash almost two years ago.

So when the time ticked by and my feet pounded against the treadmill and Mark Pellegrino’s ugly ass face didn’t show itself, I was sort of surprised.

I toweled off and made my way to the washroom, so sweaty that it made my sneakers squeak when I walked. I never had a chance of hearing his footsteps behind me.

I stood under the hot spray, eyes closed, head tilted upwards, humming to myself. The pounding of the water against the shower floor, combined with the low timbre of my humming blocked out the small squeak the door made as it opened and closed.

After a few minutes I turned off the shower, toweled off and pulled on a pair of pants, planning to walk back to my and Jared’s room and put on my shirt and shoes there. There is something about washrooms and that terrible sticky heat that makes your clothes heavy and tight and hard to put on. I preferred to get dressed in the comfort of air-conditioning.

And that’s how I found myself here. It’s so foggy in the small room that it takes a moment for me to be certain that it’s him, standing in front of the hallway door, blocking my path.

“It’s good to see you again, Jensen.”

“Wish I could say the same,” I mutter as I make my way to move past him. He doesn’t let me. “Seriously,” I say, questioning his childish antics. My question is greeted with a trademark curled-smile.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” I make to move past him again, but he puts his hand on my bare chest and holds me back. I hate the way his flesh feels against mine; it’s far too familiar than I’m comfortable with. I feel like when he pulls his hand away I will have a rash from where he put his palm. “What’s the matter, baby boy? You retired or something?”

“Something like that. What do you want, Pellegrino?”

“Nothing if you’re retired,” he steps out of my way. This whole thing reeks of being too easy. Like an older sibling holding a toy just out of reach. I move past him slowly, expecting him to…to something. Something about men like him makes them seem omnipotent. I’m about to push on the door when his voice stops me, “But if you aren’t, I’ll pay you good.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“Who said I was talking about money.” I hear the crinkle of plastic as he pulls something out of his pocket. “I don’t have any heroin. Sorry baby boy, I know that’s what you’re into. But I do have enough E to tide you over ‘til you can get your hands on what you really want.”

My hands are trembling and I will them to stop, but they just _won’t_. “How’d you pull that off?” I try not to let whatever earthquake is running through me shake my voice. I’m not entirely successful.

“I have enough money to pay someone to look the other way. Unfortunately, sneaking in a prostitute is a lot more difficult than sneaking in pills. Lucky you and I bumped into each other, huh?”

I’m going to leave. I’m going to push open the door and let the cool burst of air hit me. I’m going to walk down the hallway and find Jared or Lauren even fucking Abel at this point and I’m going to stay with them until I forget about all this.

I turn to face Pellegrino. The look in his eyes means he knows he’s won. I hate proving that smug bastard right. I hate being sober. It seems my abhorrence for the latter is greater because I say, “I’ll blow you, but that’s it. Three pills, one blow. Deal.”

He shrugs. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

I step toward him and he pushes me up against the wall.

“Pills first,” I squeak.

“Only one up front.”

“Two.”

I feel him slip something into my pocket. His hand is still pressing me against the wall. He’s one of the sick ones that likes feeling the power of holding you down, likes knowing you don’t want him.

This is probably what gives Jared the idea that he’s forcing me when his six foot four frame pushes through the door and his eyes land on Mark’s lips pressed hard against mine.

“You bastard,” he bellows, before shoving Mark away from me with so much force that Mark falls to the floor. Which is probably a good thing because if he were in reach I’m fairly certain Jared would’ve punched him.

“You okay?” Jared asks me while he pushes me behind him. Part of me wants to protest the motion but I can’t speak. I can barely move enough to nod.

Upon seeing my assurance Jared turns back to Mark.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are but if you ever pull a stunt like this again I’ll fucking kill you.”

Mark looks taken aback, he stands up and dusts himself off, though there is no dust.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think _you_ are, but Jensen and I were just having some fun. You had no fucking right to—“

“Oh yeah?” Jared cuts him off and turns to me, “Tell me, Jen, were you two just _having some fun_?” The question is sneered. It is entirely sarcastic. There is no part of him that believes the answer is yes and I can’t bring myself to put doubt into the mind of someone who has so much faith in me. I can’t tell him about the drugs, partly because he’ll either take them or rat me out, but mostly because I don’t want to let him down.

I shake my head; I tell myself I’ll flush the pills later. I don’t need them anymore.

I can see the fury spark in Mark’s eyes. He thinks I’ve screwed him over, he thinks I’ve planned this to get the pills without getting on my knees. But he can’t very well tell a stranger that he had every right to force me into sex because he paid me with illegal drugs. If Jared told the wrong person his time here would be extended and his E taken away.

With me it was different, I would’ve gone down right alone with him if I ratted.

But Jared is too much of a risk.

And when Jared’s large hand wraps around my arm and pulls me away I can’t shake the feeling that there will be hell to pay for this. But more than that, I can’t shake the heavy feeling of the two tiny pills in my pocket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	32. Chapter 32

“You're the choice I made before I knew what the other choices were.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Recovering is hard to explain._

_It’s the kind of process that never really stops, like a river never stops flowing and the earth never stops spinning. It happens every day._

_Every time I laugh so hard my stomach hurts._

_Every time I take a bite of something and swallow._

_Every time I look in a mirror and don’t hate what I see._

_I used to feel like I was below everybody else, now I feel as though I’m above them. I don’t mean that to be pompous. I don’t want to be above them. I wish everyone was happy with who they are, but it makes me smile to think of how far I’ve come. It makes me proud._

_Not every step is a step forward. But it always feels like a step towards something._

***

I mean I knew it was going to happen. I hadn’t been sure of exactly how many days were left but I knew it was getting down to two or three. It doesn’t seem like it could’ve possibly been two months but we’re sitting in group and Abel tells us to say goodbye to Jensen because this’ll be his last session and that’s when it really hits me that he’s going home tomorrow morning.

And whether or not this fact worries me will depend on what he says tonight. What his answer to the question I asked him a few days ago, after pulling him out of the washroom, ends up being.

_“Fuck, Jense, are you okay?” He was shaking and his face was ashen. I led him over to his bed and sat down next to him, rubbing warm circles on his back._

_“I’m fine,” he insisted, despite his body language suggesting otherwise, and he gave a weak attempt at shrugging my hand off his back, but I just kept making circles until eventually my hand snuck under his shirt and my warm palm came into contact with his clammy skin._

_It was too early for us to be in our room, but I didn’t give a fuck._

_“He’s gonna be pissed,” Jensen whispered, “there isn’t much he can do to me in here, but once I get out…”_

_“You’ll be with me,” I insist._

_Jensen rubbed his hands down his face as though this was the last thing he wanted to hear._

_“Not right now, Jared, okay.”_

_And it wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed his hesitancy, the way he stilled when I mentioned anything pertaining to a future between the two of us. But I hadn’t realized he’d thought of being with me as such a chore. The tired sigh in his voice made me think that, though, and I withdrew my hand from his back._

_“Jared, it isn’t like—“_

_“Forget it, I don’t know what I was thinking.” My mind flashed to earlier that day, when I’d told my mother about him. About_ me _. How much I had put on the line because I’d been dumb enough to think that this was anything more than sex._

_“I just…can’t.”_

_And I knew I sounded like a petulant child but I couldn’t help myself. To my horror, I’d realized that there was the familiar sensation of tears prickling behind my eyes and I had to do anything I could to distract myself from that, to keep them at bay. “But couldn’t you just try? I don’t mean that you haven’t tried…I just mean, with me. Couldn’t you just try once, with me?” For me._

_And Jensen looked like he was pretty much on the verge of tears as well, shaken from this entire experience, when he said, “I’ll think about, okay. That’s all I can give you right now.”_

_Maybe it shouldn’t have been enough, but it was._

And now here we were. Sitting in group. Lauren smiling supportively at him, and Pellegrino staring at him with that look of reproach. The asshole clearly didn’t take rejection very well.

I would think all the angry glares were rather humorous, except that they seemed to scare the crap out of Jen, who insists that Pellegrino’s going to extract some sort of revenge on him. I think about assuring him that we could just call the cops if something like that happened, but 1) I still didn’t know for sure if there would be a ‘we’ by tomorrow morning and 2) I didn’t think Jensen had the same faith in the police force as I did.

The entire day passes in sort of a haze and by wakeup call the next morning Jensen is already up and packing his meager belongings into an old duffel bag. I just lay there and watch him for a while. I can see his toned shoulders move beneath his thin white shirt.

His hair is dripping from a shower he must’ve taken.

His feet are bare.

He’s beautiful.

He doesn’t let on to knowing that I’m watching him, but after a while he leans forward and lets his head drop. And I’m waiting, my entire body pounding along with the stampede in my chest.

_Say yes. Say yes. Say yes._

He doesn’t. Instead he says, “I can’t make you any promises.” But I grin anyway, and I toss back the covers and I press his mouth to mine, cupping his face in my palms, because the yes is implied.

“I can’t make you any promises,” he repeats when we pull apart.

I kiss him again.

“I probably won’t work.”

I kiss him again.

He laughs and it sounds kind of like how honey tastes. “Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll stop being cynical. Now you need to let me pack or I won’t be ready in time.” Theoretically, Jensen has a checkout time he’s supposed to be ready by. But it doesn’t really matter since no one is coming to pick him up, he’s taking a cab—I push that thought away as soon as comes into my mind. It’s one of those terrible things that I really don’t mean to think about.

“I could think of other things we could do,” I offer.

Jensen chuckles. “We’ll be able to do that as much as we want in nine days after you get out.”

“Nine days,” I mutter, “too fucking long.” I come rub my hand up and down Jensen’s toned arms.

“You could always leave now.”

“My parents would kill me.”

“Won’t lack of sex kill you first?”

“Hah, you won’t be saying that after you meet my parents.” For once the reference to the future doesn’t elicit a sigh. Instead, Jensen smiles softly at me before returning to packing.

I get dressed as well. I have to accompany Jensen to checkout—not just to see him off, but because I need to ensure Cassidy that it’s okay to give Jensen the key to my apartment. I hope she doesn’t ask me to explain why that is because just thinking about that conversation makes me blush.

Maybe it’s a little soon to be living together. Okay, so it’s definitely too soon. But these aren’t normal circumstances. I don’t want Jen to have to worry about money or rent or anything really, at least not until he’s been clean for a while. I believe he can do it, but I want to wait until he believes it too.

Besides, we’ve practically been living together for months now.

We step out into the hallway and a burst of cool air hits us and I can’t explain it, but it feels like a new beginning. And judging by the way Jen smiles up at me, he can feel it too.


	33. Chapter 33

“The truth is: there's not enough miracles to go around, kid. And there's too many people petitioning God for the winning lotto ticket. And for every answered prayer, there's a cricket with arthritis.” –Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_I remember brief flashes of the drive in the ambulance, just after the bullet ripped through my skin as though it were tearing though a piece of fabric, pulling at every seam until it snapped. Except those seams were my flesh. And all I could think was, it isn’t fair._

_Cliché, huh?_

_But I wasn’t talking about death because I wasn’t afraid of death. Well, I mean, I was, of course I was, but I wasn’t afraid of death in the same way I was afraid of overdosing or, uh, oh yeah, getting shot by one of my fucking johns! There is no fear more irrational than the fear of the inevitable._

_And I wasn’t talking about death because it wouldn’t have been true. Death is probably the only truly fair thing in the whole goddamn world._

_It’s life that’s filled with cheats and shortcuts and those fucking blue shells from Mario Kart. Life and its length and the suffering we endure during the lengths of our lives that aren’t fair. Death is certain, the same and absolute. I suppose there are various ways to die, but dying is still a part of your life._

_It isn’t until your heart pumps its last beat and your lungs take their last breath that you’re really dead. And then the playing field is even._

_At least, that’s what I have to believe._

***

On the one hand, it could’ve been worse. On the other hand, this is pretty fucking bad.

Jared and I had been so deep in conversation that we missed it when the cab arrived. But Mark must not have. I didn’t see him go up to the vehicle. Didn’t see his clandestine conversation with the cabby, didn’t see the cash that must’ve changed hands.

I barely thought twice about it when Mark walked back in from his supposed ‘cigarette break’ not smelling at all like smoke. I was thinking about the future. For the first time, I didn’t see me myself in five years exactly where I was. Stuck in place, like I was standing on the shore and I’d sunken so deep into the sand that I couldn’t dig myself out, no matter how hard I tried. But thanks to a tidal wave named Jared Padalecki, for the first time, I wanted more. I wanted more enough to work for it.

I climbed into the cab, taking my duffel bag in with me, and spouted off a quick apology and asked him if he’d been waiting long.

“Not long at all,” he said. It escaped my notice that he sounded more guilty than annoyed, his wrinkled hands shaking despite their white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

Jared waved wildly from just outside the lobby and I held up a hand in goodbye, grinning at the enthusiasm with which he approached life.

There were parts of New York that I knew like the back of my hand but the part where Jared’s apartment resided was not one of them. Still I should’ve fucking known. When the clean (or at least, clean by New York City standards) streets turned into grimy sidewalks with a river of green slush and crumpled McDonalds bags and burnt out cigarette buts running right alongside them. When the number of people passing by dwindled to the occasional guy in a hoodie, or a girl in heels too high and a shirt too tight who held the same occupation that I used to.

And I definitely should’ve picked up on the fact that the cabby never asked me for an address.

It was a gray type of day. Not just because that was the general color of the skyscrapers and the sidewalks and the empty alleys we were now driving past. But rather, because that was the color that swallowed up the azure of the sky, and the color of the mist that seemed to settle over everything on dreary days, such as today.

But despite the red flags and the warning signs, it wasn’t until we turned into one of the alleys that I said, “I think we’ve taken a wrong turn.”

I wasn’t upset, or even annoyed. Nothing negative could pierce the bubble of excitement that surrounded me, though I’d never admit to Jared just how much I was looking forward to having a clean slate for the first time in my life.

I didn’t see the men come out from behind the dumpsters.

I didn’t see them approach the cab.

The cabby turned back to me, his wrinkled face pale and his grey eyes so wide I could see the red veins in them.

“I’m sorry kid, I really am. But the man gave me a lot of money to bring you here, and I got a family to feed.”

“What on earth are you—“ Someone opened the door on my side of the cab. Instinct told me to dive toward the door on the other side, to get as far away from whomever was there as possible. But a hand grabbed my ankle. And then there was another hand. And then it seems as though there were hundreds of hands, grasping my legs and my clothing and yanking both me and my duffel bag out of the cab.

I hit my head hard on the floor of the cab just before I got a face full of gravel.

The cabby drove away with his door still open, the car wheels spitting yet more gravel at me.

There were three men. They all could’ve been the same person. Same type of clothing. Same dark faces. Same superfluous amount of tattoos. Two of them beat me: heavy thuds of fists into my back and the sting of tiny rocks digging into my face and chest. The other searched through my bag: I caught a glimpse or two of him pulling out my wad of money.

“Pellegrino sends his regards,” one of them sneered, “and his says if you ever fuck with him again he’ll blow your fucking brains out.” I already knew both of these things, but I couldn’t open my mouth to talk or gravel would get in it.

A boot tip collided with my side, the toe digging into my ribs, and I let out a scream. They laughed. I wondered how much Pellegrino had to pay them to do this. Probably not very much, they seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.

I don’t remember passing out any more than I remember waking up.

But here I am. Facedown in the same place they’d left me. Dried blood sticking my shirt to me. My forehead throbbing. Beating like it has a pulse of it’s own. Like I said, it’s pretty damn bad.

I have no money. Probably no phone, assuming they took that as well, which meant I didn’t have Jared’s phone number. I knew his address and it would take me a couple of days, but I could probably get there, assuming I can walk—I’m a little afraid to try.

That perfect life that had seemed so close only moment ago, now seems so very far away. Light-years away. And I was dumb for thinking I could ever crawl out of this bottomless pit that my mother tossed me into.

Because I’m lying in an empty alley after being beaten half to death and what I want isn’t revenge, or medical treatment, or even Jared. And it makes me feel awful, but it also makes it clear that saying yes to Jared had been a mistake. Who I am is molded into cement, immutable.

More than anything, I want a hit.

And I may not have a hit. But in the pocket of my fraying jeans I have something else.


	34. Chapter 34

“Because before I met you I used to want to lock myself into a vault just to feel precious. But now with every kiss, hello and goodbye, I feel a self worth no banker can tally.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_I remember thinking that leaving Graystone would be like a new beginning. I should’ve known better._

_There’s no such thing as a new beginning. Nothing that’s done can ever be undone, not completely. Every time a pencil erases something, a mark is still left behind. An indent in the paper, just a little too dark. There are always vestiges. Traces and fingerprints. Hands that have molded us into what we are._

_You can’t cut life into a before and an after like you’re slicing through the middle of a loaf of bred. Because the timeline of life isn’t horizontal, it’s vertical. Memories are built on top of other memories, like Jenga. You can pull out the bottom without gravity tearing the whole structure apart._

***

On the one hand, I try not to think about it, on the other hand, it seems like I can do nothing but.

I try not to think about it because if I think about it too much I start to hate Jensen for what he did. If he didn’t want to go with me, if he wasn’t willing to try, he could’ve just said something. Simply vanishing into thin air (with the key to my apartment, I might add) neither talking to me nor picking up his goddamn phone, was a shitty thing to do. And that’s putting it mildly.

It makes me feel like _I_ wasn’t worth trying for. It makes me want to stick my fingers down my throat again.

Which is what I tell my therapist at our first appointment—two weeks after I left rehab and went home to an empty apartment. I don’t know how I knew that Jensen hadn’t even been there, but I could tell.

And judging from the way my mother looked at me when I told her what happened and begged her not to tell dad about me and Jensen—a sort of practiced pity—she’d seen it coming

My therapist, the one and only Samantha Ferris, who had welcomed me back despite my storming out on her, says that that doesn’t make any sense. She says that Jensen is an addict, and sometimes people have moments of weakness, moments of selfishness, that cause them to feed their addictions, in spite of who it might hurt.

She reminds me that there was a time when I did something similar.

It’s hard to think about, but it does make me feel better about what happened with Jensen, and I’m glad I allowed my mother to talk me into giving Ferris a second chance.

However, that logic does nothing to allay the anger I feel.

There are days when I’m so mad that I can’t see straight, and I hope that Jensen never shows his face again.

There are days when I’m so worried that I watch the news and search online for any news involving male prostitutes, both dreading and hoping to catch sight of Jensen’s name, or at least, description.

There are days when I trick myself into thinking that I’m over the whole goddamn thing.

Two months after I leave Graystone, I’m buying groceries when I bump into her. She looks cute in her navy blue wool winter hat with her big brown eyes. It’s been so long since I’ve seen Genevieve that it takes me a moment to come to terms with the fact that she’s standing here.

“Been a while, huh?” She says, flashing me a friendly white smile. “How are you doing?”

“Good,” I tell her, nodding so as to emphasize the statement. And it’s true. The sessions with Samantha are helping deal with any remnants of my issues and I’ve stopped worrying so much about Jensen. It’s still there, the twitching feeling, like he’s lying dead in a dumpster and I just don’t know about it. And when I think too much about the possibility of that being true it feels like a punch to the stomach. And sometimes and even worse feeling stems from the thought of him with other men—even if it is just for money. But I sleep regular hours and I only check the news maybe once every other week. So when I repeat, “good.” I smile, because it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve felt that way.

We get online to check out. Me with bags full of food and toiletries and Gen with nothing but a bag of dog food.

“New pet,” she informs me, her brown eyes sparkling, “my therapist said she thought it would be good for me. Her name’s Holly, she’s a Cocker spaniel.” She sounds kind of like a proud mom and I smile at her. “You should meet her sometime.”

“Do you live in the area?”

“Yup. Just moved. Change of scenery and whatnot.”

“Another tip from the therapist?”

“Mm-hm.”

It feels nice, to be talking to her, like we’re graduates at a reunion—granted, a reunion of a rehabilitation center, but a reunion nonetheless.  The only brief moment when I regret taking up a conversation with her is when she asks how Jensen looked when he left. “I mean I know you guys weren’t close or anything,” she says, and I try not to snort at the irony of that statement, “But I just thought you might know. I always sort of worried about what would happen to him when he left. He never seemed to think that Graystone would actually help him.” She sighs. “Just, did you know, did he have any plans?”

 _Not that he kept_. “Not that I know of.” I lie. Because I don’t feel like explaining the rest of the truth. I don’t like answering the question, but I like Gen all the more for asking it. She really does care about people deeply, despite her anger problems.

Sometimes, I think Gen is the most stable of any of us. Even compared to normal people. Everyone had problems, but Gen and I have the type that’s easier to see, and Gen’s dealing with hers better than most.

She blows out a breath, puffing out her cheeks, and pushing a stray strand of hair away from her face, before it settles in its original position. Without thinking, I reach over and tuck it behind her ear.

After that, neither of us says anything for a while, and I almost apologize for the awkward gesture. But I catch Gen looking at me as the checkout lady swipes my card and I feel sort of tingly. It’s a good feeling, one I’ve missed.

So when we’re approaching the exit and Gen asks if I want to get coffee with her, I can tell it’s a lot more than coffee I’d be agreeing to. And I say yes. Because Jensen left and because I like Gen.

I like the way she looks, no makeup on (at least I think not, I can never tell), standing out in the snow, face turned upward. I like that when the sunlight catches certain strands of her hair they look like they’ve been dipped in gold. I like her sense of humor and her laugh that tinkles like wind chimes and special little things I never noticed about Sandy.

And what I feel may not be all that intense, but it helps me forget about what I ~~feel~~ felt for Jensen.


	35. Chapter 35

“Gleam,  Where the street lamps are broken, Leaving 14 year old first time hookers unable to see what their getting into. Then shine for the 14-year-old last time hookers and everything they went through.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_It sucks how fast it can all fly out the window. Months of sobriety and one dick lawyer and a couple of pills have fucked it all up irreparably._

_It’s like building a sandcastle just to have to waves knock it down_

_And then, suddenly, the place you were just seconds before is a million miles away. And you’ve spilt a jar of marbles on the floor and they’re all flying in different directions, clanking into one another like bumper carts. And you try to pick them all up, but there are just so many of them. And you had them all together just a moment ago. And spilling them was so goddamn disheartening that you see no reason to try again._

_Especially when odds are they’ll just end up back on the floor._

***

It takes a little over a month for my wounds to heal, but I avoid going back to work for weeks after. I put it off like a teenager puts off cleaning their room, and even more than that, I put off digging down to the root of exactly why I want to put it off. I mean, of course I don’t _want_ to hook, but I convince myself that my sudden aversion toward doing it is purely for that reason and that reason alone. It has nothing to do with a tall hazel-eyed tidal wave. Nothing at all.

But I can’t forgo working for forever.

Eventually the hooker who I’m rooming with, Rachel Miner, starts demanding some payment. Not to mention that I still haven’t had a hit yet and I’m climbing the walls of this goddamn motel room.

I’d gone for months without heroin, but not it feels like every second is the longest measure of time there is, and that periods any longer than that defy explanation.

So I swallow whatever guilt I haven’t already drowned myself in and walk out onto the street. I’ve forgotten just how shitty this is. Even before Graystone, I had regulars who would phone me. I haven’t stood on a street corner under a lamp with clothes neither suited for the weather nor my size, in almost a year.

I’ve forgotten just how nerve-wracking it is to get into a car with a stranger in the hopes that he isn’t an axe murderer.

Fuck those assholes for snagging my phone. At least if they’d left that I’d have some contacts left—assuming they forgave me for my extended vacation to the Looney bin and hadn’t moved on to a different piece of ass.

And it’s not like I can buy a new one until I pay Rachel back and get myself a hit. Or rather, if we’re going in chronological order, until I get myself a hit and then pay Rachel back. I’m a man with priorities, if nothing else.

My skin is crawling with goose bumps and I can’t seem to stop my teeth from chattering every time a wisp of wind sweeps over me, carrying white specks along with it, when a sleek silver car pulls up next to the sidewalk and the window rolls down.

That’s my cue.

As I walk up to the car I dust off the snowflakes that have clung to the tiny hairs on my arm. It’s way too fucking cold for this shit. For a brief moment I pause and think about trying to postpone some more. I think about begging Rachel for another week or another day. But it wouldn’t work and it would only serve to augment the debt I already owe her.

Around here, kindness is measured by the size of your wallet.

So I continue walking forward, my feet leaving prints in the thin blanket of snow that coats the sidewalk. And it looks so very white and pure. In contrast to this street and these buildings and me. All things that seem to be perpetually covered in a layer of grime. But not the snow. For some reason that makes me think of Jared, which really doesn’t help the whole guilt situation.

The man in the car is old, plump, and balding. I ask for more money than I usually would, but I’m trying to make up for lost time. Luckily, the guy seems to like me enough to pay extra and I climb into the car, rubbing my hands together over the heater.

We make small talk:

“What’s your name baby?”

“Jensen.” _None of your goddamn business._

“How’s your night going so far Jensen?”

“Better now that you’re here.” _So shitty there aren’t words._

“You up for some fun?”

“For you, anything.” _Get your hand off of me or I’ll break it._

The old guy’s name is Kurt Fuller. I wasn’t paying attention when he told me what job he has. Probably something pretentious. Surgeon. CEO. Lawyer. They all fall along that line. He’s married, judging by the wedding ring on his finger. That doesn’t matter much, judging by the prostitute sitting in his passenger seat.

It’s a nice hotel. Everything is sort of shiny and all of the colors are warm. Chandeliers hang from high up ceilings. My stomach feels like it’s been twisted inside out. I feel like I have to force my brain to send a message to my feet to move, every time I take a step up the spiral staircase.

I think I might be leaving a trail of snowy, muddy footprints in my wake. I don’t care enough to check.

We have champagne, Kurt and I. There’s nothing to celebrate, no holiday or anything. But maybe a night without his wife is a rare occasion for Mr. Fuller because as excited as he looks, he also looks like he wants to savor this. Like he’s tasting a delicious, juicy piece of steak and he never wants the flavor to fade.

It’s hard to do this to Jared. But not so hard that I don’t. Not so hard that I tell Fuller to stop.

And when the night is over and I’m sweaty and sore and I feel as though I’ve been ripped open, I take the money, save most of it for Rachel, but I keep just enough for a cab and some smack handy.

The dealer I visit is an old friend—or as close to a friend as people in our positions have. People so low we practically live in the sewers that run through the city like veins carrying sludge.

I make sure to watch him take the needle out of the plastic, which is probably the only worthwhile thing my mother ever taught me to do. A lot of dangerous things come from sharing that cold, shiny piece of silver. Diseases and whatnot.

I tie my arm, cutting off the circulation, so that I can see my vein, stark and blue against the fragile white skin of my underarm. I’m pale most of the year, but especially so during the wintertime.

My pulse is beating underneath my thumb as if in this moment that tiny place beneath my finger is where my entire heart resides, and I plunge the silver into it, pressing down on the syringe, letting out a puff of relief that shows up white in the winter air, as though snowflakes are clinging to it.

For the first time I don’t feel cold. I don’t feel sorry. I don’t feel lonely.

I don’t feel.


	36. Chapter 36

“I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_It sucks how nothing is ever good enough when you can’t have what you want. Nothing can ever take the place of something you lost; no matter how many origami shapes it rearranges itself into in its attempt to fit into the empty spaces left behind._

_Sometimes, even the things you lost don’t fit back in. They’ve all changed. Demented by the winds and rains and fingerprints of life. They’ve all lost their shapes. And you’re just going to have to deal with the cracks and the pieces that don’t quite fit anymore and get used to feeling empty._

***

It took a while, but I’ve settled back into a routine. Time feels like it’s dragging its feet through mud. At least, it felt like that. But when Gen suggests we move in together it feels like I’ve pole-vaulted from leaving Graystone to this frozen moment in time.

She says is so casually as she brings a handful of popcorn to her mouth. Her voice barely carries over the rain coming down outside and over the _Doctor Who_ episode that’s playing, blocking out the automated words of a cyber man.

For a brief moment my mouth drops open and the popcorn in it nearly falls out. Thank god I have the good sense to snap my jaw shut and swallow before I begin to speak.

We’ve only been dating for four months, way too soon to move in, isn’t it? We haven’t even gone any farther than third base, and that was only once.

I sit back against the couch, and then I reach over and mute the TV, because I can’t seem to think. It’s like the noise is blaring in my ears, scrambling my brain, even though the volume low enough for Gen to speak over it without raising her voice.

It isn’t until I realize that I have absolutely no interest in moving in with Gen that I own up to what I’ve been doing. Because I never really had any interest in Gen at all, I liked her, I suppose in time I could love her, but not like that. There was never any passion, never any _want_. With Jensen there’d been nothing but.

I look her up and down—she’s wearing my red sweater, her hair hanging in waves over her shoulder, curly and wet from the shower she’d taken earlier and leaving dark spots on my sweater. She wears dark brown Uggs on her feet.

She’s beautiful.

And it doesn’t seem to matter.

“You told me that your lease was almost up,” she goes on. I try to tell her that she’s shooting bullets at the sky, but she cuts me off, “I know it’s soon. But couldn’t you just _try_?”

The words remind me all too much of Jensen and what I said to him, and the thought makes me want to jump on the computer and search for him again. To make sure that there isn’t an obituary of a John Doe fitting his description. In the months since he disappeared I haven’t come across anything about Jensen except a couple of “Missing” articles from a few years ago. And the only thing they’ve told me is that Jensen grew up in northern Pennsylvania and that he was the son of Donna and Alan Ackles.

An idea flits through my brain like a microscopic butterfly, but now isn’t the time and I return my attention to the conversation.

“I don’t think so, Gen,” I say softly.

She closes her eyes before opening them again, too long to be considered a blink.

“Why not?” I wish I had a better answer for her. One that would sting less. But there was no reason I shouldn’t want to be with Genevieve. She was smart, funny, interesting, and beautiful. She put up with my dorky taste in television. My parents loved her—even my mom, who knew more than I could ever tell my father.

“I’m sorry.”

“That isn’t a reason. Just tell me why? I understand if you don’t want to, if it’s too much stock to put in a new relationship, but I deserve an explanation, I deserve to be told that.” She’s trying so very hard not to lose her temper; her pale pink fingernails dig into the fabric of my couch.

“That isn’t why?” I can see her growing frustration with me, like I’m blowing up a balloon until it pops. “Gen, I lied to you. I’ve been lying to you. And I’m so sorry. But what I told you, about Jensen, that I didn’t know anything. It wasn’t true.”

“Oh my god,” she whispers, nodding slowly as if against her will. And I know she doesn’t have to be told. She could see it the same Liane saw it, it had just taken Gen longer to really look. “You two were…so where is he?”

“No idea. We’d made plans for him to stay with me when we left, but he just…vanished.”

Times elapses. The light from the television eliminates our faces and Gen sets the popcorn bowl down on the coffee table.

“And I was what,” she whispers, “convenient?”

“No, Gen, that’s not it.” But yes, yes it is. And fuck I feel like a bastard.

“Convenient. A replacement. Second best. Not worth coming first. Not worth being faithful to!” Gen’s voice grows louder with each word, like climbing up rungs on a ladder. By the end she’s almost shouting.

“Genevieve,” I try but all it does is spur her into action. She stands up and throws the popcorn bowl across the room. Spilling the leftover kernels all over the carpet. And then she stands there. Her chest heaving with her heavy breaths and I try again. “Genevieve?”

I reach to touch her but she steps away.

“I need to get out of here,” she mutters, before starting toward the front door. She’s crying, but I can tell she doesn’t want me to see. So I don’t call her back. Because she’s right, she needs time.

And I know what I did was shitty, and I feel guilty as hell.

But there’s something else tugging at my mind and I make my way over to my laptop, which is resting on the kitchen counter. I’m still angry with Jensen, but I don’t want him to get hurt. I need to see him. And this probably won’t get me anywhere but maybe it will.

Because I can’t find Jensen, but I can find someone else. I don’t know how it never occurred to me before:

Donna Ackles.

It’s time for a trip.

 


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Very dark chapter ahead...

“Flash like the blade of the knives we hold to the throats of those that would have us believe love isn’t for everyone.” –Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Have you ever thought about slavery?_

_Strange intro, I know. Let me back track. Everyone looks down on slavery—as they well should, don’t get me wrong. Be we also look down on slave owners, when in reality, how do we know we wouldn’t have been just like them. Raised in those times in those ways with those values there is no reason why the same percentage of the population that had slaves back then wouldn’t have them now._

_My point is, just because you’ve never done something doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t. If everyone thinks they’re so far above owning slaves then that means a good portion of them are wrong. So think twice about who you are before you judge who I am._

***

In the following months I manage to get back a few of my old regulars. I’m not rolling in money, by any means, but I have enough to make it by. Fuller becomes a permanent fixture in my life, though, and a well paying one.

Four months after that freezing cold January night is the first time I ever visit his house.

The wife and kids must be away or something.

Maybe it’s extremely judgmental of me, but I hate some of the people that hire me. Not all of them, because that would make me kind of a hypocrite considering that they finance my life, but the ones with wedding rings and smiley family photos hanging from their refrigerators next to yearbook pictures and report cards and shopping lists. It’s like, what the fuck, man?

You have it all. Or at least, what matters.

And you’re throwing that away to have a good time with a prostitute.

Anyway, Fuller was in a particularly good mood when he called and he asked me to bring a friend—a girl, preferably. Which had me kind of taken aback, because I’d thought the guy was 100% homo, but whatever.

So I call up Rachel and I tell her I got a job for her. I figure I owe her a favor after she let me crash with her in the good faith that I would pay her back and not just bail in the middle of the night.

It’s eleven when we show up at the house. It isn’t a mansion per se, but damn it’s close. Big and white with a three-car garage that only holds the familiar silver vehicle Fuller drove the first time I met him.

“Nice place,” Rachel comments between cigarettes puffs as we make our trek up Fuller’s driveway—the cabby refused to take us that far. I hate smoking. I mean I know I’m not really one to talk when it comes to addictions. But fuck they smell awful. And the smell soaks into shit too, like the entire time Rachel and I’d shared a place the sheet and drapes smelled perpetually like nauseating smoke.

We ring the doorbell.

Ten seconds later he answers, wearing a wine-colored sweater and jeans—a far cry from the crisp suits he usually sees me in, probably because he usually comes right from work.

He smiles down at us. “This you’re friend, baby?” He asks me.

I nod at him and Fuller nods at Rachel before opening the door further to let us inside.

When we walk past him I lean over and give him a kiss on the cheek. It tastes powdery, like latex, and I resist the urge to wipe my mouth on my sleeve, or gag. The older ones are the worst. At least when they’re young you can pretend that you want it too.

Fuller’s bought us for the entire night, two thousand a piece. He’s the kind that likes to play pretend. Likes to pretend that we’re enjoying ourselves, that this is all some sort of party. I don’t quite know if that makes it easier of harder, but it certainly makes it less painful.

Or so I thought.

We dine on steak and drink wine and Fuller tells stories of his colleagues at work. He doesn’t once mention his family, but for a while it isn’t so bad. The stories are kind of funny and it’s only every once in a while, when Fuller runs his hand up and down Rachel’s thigh, brushing up her skintight black dress, that I remember how this night ends.

Dinner ends and music comes on. Two hours after our arrival I’m sitting on Fuller’s lap as we watch Rachel dance in her black silk bra and panties on the glass table in the living room. She moves back and forth like a pendulum.

Fuller motions for her to come to him and I slide off his lap onto the couch. Rachel, who’s imbibed more than any of us. Nearly slips on her way off the table, despite the fact that she took off her heels as soon as we left the kitchen. She stumbles over to him and that’s when I see him slide the razor out of his pocket.

The fog of alcohol and sex that has filled the air vanishes.

I slide away from him. “I don’t do blood play.”

He smiles at Rachel, “I know _you_ don’t, baby boy, but I’m thinking about you’re friend here. How about it sweetheart? I’ll pay two hundred extra.”

Rachel frowns, wrinkling her brow. “I don’t think so, sorry.” She slurs. And thank god she has the good sense to say no; because I have a feeling Fuller wouldn’t appreciate me speaking for her, judging by the flames in his eyes.

“Come on, it’ll be good. Doesn’t hurt much, sweetheart, I promise.”

He sounds like my mother and I feel sick. “She said no!” I remind him forcefully. And that pushes him over the edge. Suddenly he’s like a boulder flying down the side of a volcano.

He reaches over and smacks me with his free hand. “Was I fucking talking to you?” I stand up, I haven’t been paid yet and I could just walk out the door if it wasn’t for Rachel. Goddamn. There was a time when I could’ve left her behind without a second thought, but that was before Graystone and Jared.

So I take a few steps away from Fuller before calling back to her, “Come on, Rachel, let’s go.”

“Why would we do that?” Her brown eyes glazed. I wonder if I’m this fucking annoying when I’m on smack. I really hope not.

“Keep your mouth shut!” Fuller screeches. “If you don’t wanna stay, fine. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. And don’t expect your two thousand.”

And I’m itching to run, but I just _can’t_.

Fuller holds the blade to Rachel’s soft skin and before I can cross the room to stop him he’s drawn a thin red line, which apparently sobers Rachel up pretty fucking quick.

“What the fuck? Get off me,” she pushes at Fuller, trying to get away despite her shitty balance.

“Stay still you little bitch!”

And I’m about to fucking punch the asshole when he reaches out and slaps Rachel. Except that he was holding the razor. And I stop in horror as a waterfall of red pours out of Rachel’s face. She’d had time to close her eyes, but it didn’t matter. The blade had sliced straight through her lids.

I can’t even begin to describe the noise she makes as red flows out of her eyes sockets.

And I can’t stay anymore. I know she isn’t dead and I shouldn’t leave her but all I can see is the silver glint of the razor that Fuller still holds and I run, bolting out the front door.

Despite the heavy thud of my footfalls I can hear Fuller coming after me. But he’s out of shape and I dart out into the nighttime spring air and I make a beeline for the woods that surround his property. I need to go somewhere his car can’t follow.

I run for what feels like hours and all I know by the time I stop is that I haven’t run far enough.

I’ve long since lost Fuller, but I can’t be in this city and feel safe anymore. I’ve had some bad experiences over the years, but this is worse than anything I can even begin to imagine.

I need to get out of this city. But before I go, there’s something I have to do. Something I’ve been putting off doing until I saved up enough money to take a plane to LA or somewhere, anywhere. I may not have the money but now I don’t have time to get it.

It’s now or never.

So after I finish loosing my dinner all over the floor of dead leaves that stretches across the forest, I begin hiking back to the street, taking out my phone to call the police for Rachel and then a cab for myself.

Hours later when I’m back at my apartment, still shaking, and the sun is peeking up from behind the skyscrapers, I sift through my duffel bag and pull out a piece of paper with Michael Roche’s address.

It’s time to take a trip.


	38. Chapter 38

“Giving your focus to wrath will leave your entire self absent of what you need. Love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Have you ever heard about ethology?_

_I hadn’t until I took a biology class my freshman year of College. And even then, I didn’t hear much about it. But it peaked my interest and I looked further into it. Basically, it’s the evolution of the behavior. Like, you know how people are afraid of Pitbulls and Rottweilers because they’re fight dogs. Not all of them, but there’s a chance that you’re dog’s mother or father was Michael Vick’s quality entertainment. And that predisposition to violence is passed down through ethology._

_At least, as far as I can understand it. I’m no expert. I only know what I read on Google._

_So basically, who you are is based on who your parents were and what your experiences are. Take all of that and put it in a blender and what you come out with is yourself. But here’s the thing, if you have no control over any of the ingredients than how much blame can you accept for what the final product turns out to be. It’s like blaming someone for the weather._

_***_

In the following ten hours after Gen storms out of my house, I pack a quick bag and take a day trip to Pennsylvania. It’s a weekend, so I don’t have to worry about school; I just take my beat-up car and drive.

Donna Ackles’ address was only a few Internet clicks away.

Ultimately the house looks better than I thought it would. It’s the pale blue color of robins’ eggs and though the paint has chipped and the front steps have tilted it looks sort of homely.

The gravel in the driveway crunches under my feet as I make my way up to the stained white door. The stairs creak and I’m afraid they’ll crack under my weight, but they don’t. Two light knocks on the door.

_Rap-rap_

I honestly don’t know what to expect. Jensen never talked much about his mom, only what he’d said in the washroom that one time.

_My dad died when I was a kid and my mom kind of fell into drugs._

_She turned to prostitution as a way to pay for it._

_And when I turned thirteen she dragged me down with her._

Anger simmers inside of me like water boiling over, but I’m not here to yell or accuse or hurt. I’m here to see if she knows anything about where Jensen might be. Has some form of contact with him, a way to track his phone, anything.

The billions of possibilities as to what Jensen’s mom could be like zip through my mind. Is she fat? Skinny? Tall? Short? Is she an outright bitch or does she cover it with a pretty smile and an exaggerated flutter of make-up drenched eyelashes.

The woman that answers the door is not one that ever crossed my mind. She isn’t wearing any makeup and she looks worn down, but she still has a faint essence of beauty about her. The same one Jensen had when I first met him, despite his too-thin limbs and gaunt face.

She’s a little plump, but it looks unnatural. Like even the slight amount of fat has no place on her bones. She was born to be skinny.

Her ratty blonde hair is pulled back into a bun and on her hip is a child that looks to be about a year old. A child that shares her mother’s blue eyes, rather than her brother’s green ones. Jensen, it appears, has a baby sister.

I’m not sure if he never mentioned her or if he just didn’t know.

“Hello?” The woman asks, eying me suspiciously. “You lost or something?”

 “I, uh…” Shit, maybe I should’ve actually planned what I was going to say. But I’m too stupefied to say anything. I’d come expecting a tweaker and arrived face to face with a mother (well, of course I knew she was Jensen’s mother, but not…well, you know what I mean).

“I haven’t got all day, kid.”

Outright bitch, then. Good to know.

“I’m here about your son.” She nearly drops the child, catching her just in time and shifting the now-crying baby to her other hip, cooing softly to her before returning her attention to me.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Jared Padalecki. I’m a student at—”

“No, I mean who are you to _Jensen_?” Her voice drops and her next words hold something akin to hope. “Do you know where he is? Is he okay?”

My stomach drops. “I was hoping you knew.”

Donna Ackles sighs and steps away from the door. I take that as a cue to follow her inside, shutting the door behind me with a soft click. She puts the baby down in a playpen and for the first time, I wonder who the father is. Jen’s father is dead and Donna isn’t wearing a ring. But I have a feeling, were I to ask, the answer would be something she didn’t want to share and I didn’t want to hear.

After setting her daughter down, Donna sits on the ragged blue couch and motions to the armchair across from her.

“I haven’t seen my son in almost two years,” she admits softly, “he, um, he ran away from home.” I avoid scoffing at the use of the word ‘home’, but it is a near thing. I don’t want to fight. I just want information. But the more I watch the woman wallow in a pool of self-pity the more disdain I amass for her. “How do you know him?”

“We, uh, we’re friends, but he took off a few months ago and I haven’t been able to get ahold of him.”

“Well, welcome to the club.” I close my eyes. We aren’t a part of any club. I didn’t deserve it when Jensen left me. She deserved a hell of a lot worse. “When you did see him, was he okay? Was he still, um…?”

“Hooking or shooting up,” I ask bluntly and I take a satisfaction in the way she flinches.

“Either.”

“Then all of the above.”

She leans back and the couch seems to swallow her up as she runs a hand down her haggard face. “You know, don’t you? About me. You know it was my fault.” I tilt my head forward. Tears are in her eyes now, the water reflecting the blue of her irises. “God, what you must think of me…I didn’t…I mean I know that there isn’t an excuse for what I did to that boy but you have to understand that I _did_ love him. I just…loved the drugs more.”

“You don’t choose a substance over someone if you really love them.” I say defiantly. The look in her eyes isn’t anger or defense. It’s a sad sort of pity.

“Do you think he’d choose you over heroin, if he had a choice?”

And that one was like a slap across the face, because no. No, he wouldn’t. No, he hadn’t. I shake my head, trying in vain to clear away that thought.

“So then _why_ , why do it in the first place?”

“Because I was selfish. Because I’d just lost my husband and I wanted an escape. And it was a mistake. But everybody makes mistakes. The difference is that mine was the permanent kind.”

“Nothing is permanent, not really.”

She laughs as though I’m a child who’s said something cute, her laugh sounds like milk being poured into a bowl of cereal. “Everything’s permanent. Nothing stays the same, but nothing disappears. Just because I’m not doing heroin anymore doesn’t make me any less of an addict.”

“So what made you stop?”

She looks over at the little girl playing with the lettered blocks in her pen, sticking them into her mouth and drooling on them as she nibbles at their wooden corners. The look on her face _is_ love. The way mom looks at dad whenever he sings loudly (and badly) to whatever decade old country song is pouring through the crackly radio station as we drive.

“I got pregnant with Mackenzie,” her face falls for a moment, “Jensen disappeared. It became so obvious how much of a fuck up I was that even the smack couldn’t hide it from me anymore. I’d missed my chance at being a good mom with Jensen. I wasn’t going to miss it a second time. I went to rehab. Did the whole nine. I’d still be taking programs now, if we had the money, but I can barely afford to hire a nanny for when I work, let alone a shrink.”

A few more minutes of conversation confirm that Donna Ackles has no idea where he son is and no way of finding out. The meeting should feel like a waste of time, but it doesn’t.

As I’m leaving she calls out, “What’s your name, again?”

“Jared.”

“Well, Jared, if you see my baby boy, do me a favor and tell him he’s a big brother.” I nod, a prickling sensation behind my eyes, so Jensen didn’t know.

This moment feels very fragile, like a drop of water clinging to the faucet before it falls into the sink and slides down the drain. “And tell him,” she takes a deep breath, “Tell him that if I could do it again I would slit my own wrists before I ever let anyone lay a hand on him, myself included.”

We’re both crying when I shut the door to her house and I wipe my tears on the back of my jacket sleeve as I slide into the driver’s seat of my car. I sit there in silence for a moment, soaking in every last detail of what just happened, when my phone rings.

I flip it over and I’m about to turn it off because it feels like it’s intruding on this moment. But that’s when I see that it’s a call from my mother. And it’s the seventh time she’s called me in the last half-hour.

“Mom,” I say when I pick up, “What is it? What’s wrong?” My voice is still croaky from the tears but I’m too panicked to notice and apparently so is my mother.

“Jared, honey, I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for ages.” Thirty minutes is not exactly ages, but my mom has a flair for the dramatic and now was not the time to point out that minor detail.

“What’s wrong?”

“Jared, it’s Genevieve.”

I sigh, leaning back in my seat. My mom really _did_ have a flair for the dramatic if she was that panicked over this. I wish I could say I was surprised. But the only part of this that surprised me is that Gen had called my fucking parents. Who the hell does that? “Mom, it’s just a break-up. It’s not that big a deal. Things were going to fast and—“

“Jared, what are you talking about?”

I sit up straighter. “What are _you_ talking about?”

“Jared, Genevieve was in a car accident last night. I just found out thirty minutes ago when her sister called me. She said she’d called you, but you hadn’t answered.”

“Is she okay?”

A long inhale. “She’s in a coma.”


	39. Chapter 39

“Like, I accept any challenge so challenge me. Like, I brought a knife to this gunfight, but the other night I mugged a mountain so bring that shit, I've had practice.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_An eye for an eye is an old concept._

_Not often used nowadays. Matter of fact it’s generally frowned upon. Like chewing with your mouth open._

_We like to say that we should do onto others as we want done to ourselves but if we all lived by that rule none of us would have to be afraid of an eye for an eye. Of losing what we’ve purloined. Of getting pushed by the person we tripped._

_I for one, think an eye for an eye is perfectly fair, just as long as the harm that the first offender inflicted wasn’t accidental._

***

_775 New York Ave, Brooklyn, Kings, New York._

Michael Roche’s house reminds me of Kurt Fuller’s. Something that would probably make my skin crawl if I wasn’t flying so high I could reach up an run my fingers through the soft white skin of the clouds.

I’d first seen the headlines that had begin flooding the front pages of newspapers two days ago: _CEO of Fuller Industries Arrested_ , _Dead Prostitute Found In Prominent CEO’s Home, Kurt Fuller Caught Attempting To Flee Murder Scene_. The ‘skinned stripper’ they were calling Rachel—despite the title not technically being accurate, she didn’t strip she hooked.

My 9-1-1 call hadn’t been made soon enough to save her.

From what I could gather from the news, and from the few crime scene photos that had been released to the press, the police arrived to find her spread out on the glass coffee table she’d been dancing on. Completely naked. Flaps of her skin having been sliced off in various places all over her body. The blood from her sliced eyelids had been resting in her sockets so long that they had begun to stain her eyes, turning them a demon-like shade of crimson.

Another person I was responsible for killing. Second on the list.

And right now I was staring up at a house that belongs to the father of the first.

I swear I had only planned to talk to him. To tell him what his son had said and to make certain that he felt the guilt he deserved, the guilt he’d earned. But somewhere between seeing the photos of Rachel’s torn up corpse and injecting enough smack into my veins to drown me in dizzy warmth I had wound up in a back alley paying with my mouth for something I thought I’d never need to buy.

I can think clearly enough to know that affluent jackasses tend to have top-notch security so I don’t bother trying to break in. I simply walk up to the door and ring the bell. I can hear the cheerful chime ring throughout the house. Music notes bouncing off the walls and swirling around in a symphonic hurricane.

It’s two in the morning so no one else is at his house, as far as I can tell. I mean, Seb had said his mom was dead, right?

I have to ring the bell twice more before a rumpled man with dark hair and a deep blue cotton bathrobe opens the door with the greeting, “Somebody better be fucking dead.”

I snort. “Somebody is.”

Michael must not hear me, or maybe he ignores me because he thinks I’m just some tweaker looking for food or money or something. He wouldn’t be wrong. I am a tweaker and I am looking for something. Although I don’t think revenge ever crossed his sleep-addled mind.

“Who are you and what the fuck are you doing on my doorstep at three in the goddamn morning?”

He’s off by an hour, but I don’t mention that.

Instead I say, “I’m a friend of your son.”

“I don’t have a son.”

I’m fairly certain he’s just being an asshole, but I have to be positive. So I ask, “Are you Michael Roche.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re the father of Sebastian Roche?”

He fixes me with a glare. “Sebastian is dead. And even if he wasn’t, he still wouldn’t be my son.” His handsome features twist in disgust. “You his boyfriend or some shit?”

I shake my head, causing the world to spin around me, like mixing paint colors together.

“Well, whatever you need, I can’t help you,” he makes to shut the door in my face but I stick my foot in the way before he can. And now he’s really angry. “Hey, get the fuck off my property before I call the cops! Who the fuck do you think you are? Coming here in the middle of the goddamn night—”

I reach forward and push him hard. He topples backwards, his words cutting off, falling on his ass on the embellished carpet. I slip inside and shut the door behind me with a soft click.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” He screams, hauling himself back up to his bare feet. He freezes when I pull out the gun. Heavy and cold in my grip. My hand is shaking, my finger vibrating against the trigger. But my eyes are steady, though bloodshot, and pinned on Michael.

“You don’t have a son?” I snarl like a particularly nasty Rottweiler. Foaming at the mouth.

He’s putting his hands up, attempting to placate me. That hypocritical asshole. The fucking coward.

“You’re angry,” he says. What keen powers of observation this intellectual giant must possess. “I understand.” _No you don’t_. “You were my son’s friend and you’re angry at me. And I’m sorry.” _No you aren’t_. “But you don’t want to do this.” _Yes I do, believe me, I do_.

This is how I rectify what I did to Sebastian. To make up for the fact that I fell asleep to the sound of his cries and woke up to the sight of his corpse.

“He’d be alive if it weren’t for you,” I say. My voice is not my own. It isn’t angry it is empty. I’m reciting a fact I’ve memorized like a middle school student during a history presentation.

“You can’t know that.”

“I know enough.” If I hadn’t heard enough from Seb, even the small interaction I just had with his father was enough to make what I had to do evident. To make what he deserved evident.

“You made him hate himself so much that he wanted to die. And even then you could’ve helped him. You could’ve stopped him. But you didn’t.”

“I could say the same about you. You’re his _friend_ , aren’t you? Why didn’t you save him?” And that one cuts deep. Because I hadn’t saved Seb. But I hadn’t hurt him either. At least, I didn’t think I had. And if I had it wasn’t intentional. Michael and I weren’t the same.

“You killed your son,” I don’t mean to say the words, but they fall out of my mouth.

“He didn’t deserve to live.” And I can tell that Michael doesn’t mean for me to hear him. I can see the panic in his eyes when he realizes that I have. The regret flashing at saying the words that he knows will cause me to pull the trigger.

And I do.

A tiny tug. A loud bang. A crimson spurt.

And I’ve ended Michael Roche’s life.

 


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm not a doctor or anything, so please just bare with me. Thank you :)

“The worst part about being sick is you get all the free ice cream you ask for. And he says the worst part about that is realizing that there’s nothing more they can do for you.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_The Butterfly affect is an old concept._

_I think I mentioned it to you before, didn’t I? How it can be applied to the present as well as the past. Well here’s another thing about it, it can be applied to the good as well as the bad. We will never truly know how many people we have hurt or how deeply. Richard Speight will never know that he was a part of the reason I used to stick my fingers down my throat. And I will never know just how big of a part I played in Gen’s car accident._

_Whether she crashed into a telephone pole because the roads were slippery from the rain. Or whether she crashed because her vision was blurred by her tears._

***

_Room 127, down the hall, make two rights and it should be the first door on the left._

The nurse’s directions echo through my head as I make my way to Genevieve’s room on autopilot.

My mom is there, as is my father despite how tense things have been between us. They sit outside Genevieve’s room in blue waiting-room chairs. My mother is comforting Gen’s sister who is sobbing so hard that she’s burst into a coughing fit.

I can see through the glass wall that both Gen’s parents are here as well, they sit by her bedside. Her mother is pushing a strand of hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear. Her father sits in the same type of chair as my parents, only his is pulled up to his daughter’s bedside.

Gen and her father had been having some problems, or at least, she’s hinted at it a few times. Daddy dearest wasn’t at all happy with his daughter for ending up in jail, even if she was only there for a month or two and even if her ex had deserved a hell of a lot worse than what she did to his car.

As I watch her sleep, seemingly peaceful except for the ugly bruised gash that mars her beautiful forehead I think back to the night when she’d told me that her ex used to hit her.

That was two weeks before she’d asked me to move in.

I was the one she’d decided to trust, the one she decided to risk getting hurt again for.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” I whisper so low that I think no one can hear it.

I’m mistaken.

My mom’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “It wasn’t your fault baby, just because she was driving home from your place doesn’t make it your fault. You can’t blame yourself.”

The entire drive here I’d been wondering if my mom had caught on to what I’d said over the phone about the breakup, but in her panic it seems that she missed it. She wouldn’t be saying those words if she knew. And I feel like I have some sort of obligation to tell her, to tell them all, that I’d broken up with Gen. That she’d driven out into the pouring rain, felling betrayed and that if she had been paying more attention to the road instead of to what an asshole I am this probably wouldn’t have happened.

A terrible thought crosses my mind: what if she’d done it on purpose.

Not for attention or anything like that, but Genevieve had trouble dealing with her anger. Was it possible that—

“Jared?” It’s Gen’s father. He’s just stepped out of her room and into the hallway. We nod at each other solemnly, because what else is there to do. After a moment he begins to walk down the hallway, out of earshot, and motions for me to follow him.

“How is she?” I ask. “When do you think she’ll wake up?” I’m eager to apologize again, to try and make her understand, to do anything to quell the guilt flowing like ink through my bloodstream.

Mr. Cortese looks at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“They, uh they don’t know. They don’t even know that she ever will.”

The reality of that is finally starting to sink in. And maybe it took me a bit too long to wrap my head around the very concrete possibility that Genevieve might die, but cut me some slack. No one expects anyone to die. Not really. Maybe old people. Maybe strangers in third world countries. But not the people that shouldn’t die. Not the young, healthy ones that you see every day and have marathons of your favorite television show with.

“And um,” Mr. Cortese goes on, “We only have so long we can wait before—“

It takes me a moment to process those words. “You’re not saying…I mean, you’re not going to, like, pull the plug on her are you? On your own daughter?” I’m unable to stop the disgust that seeps into my voice.

“We don’t have a choice, Jared. Genevieve has a living will that states she doesn’t want an artificial life. And the doctors,” his voice breaks, “the doctors say that there’s almost no chance of recovery, not from the head wound she received when she hit the telephone pole. Fuck…” And then he breaks off into tears, curling in on himself, his large shoulders shaking. “She’s my daughter and I haven’t treated her like it in months. I was just so angry with her and I…and now I’m going to bury my baby girl.”

            He heaves in a sharp breath and then goes on, “Do you know what the last thing I said to her was?”

I shake my head.

His hands are still covering his eyes so I don’t think he sees me, but I don’t think he needs to.

“Me neither,” he sniffs.

Then he lets out a laugh that sounds like a sob, but to be honest, I wish that I didn’t remember the last thing I said to her either.

Gen’s father makes his way over to the wall and sits down on the tile floor with his back propped up against it. And as I look at him I imagine black cracks forming all over his skin and shattering him into chunks of granite as though he were made of stone.

“I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault, Jared. None of us blames you, how could we?”

I wish people would stop saying things like that, not when they don’t know better. Don’t know that the last thing I said to Genevieve was her name. I called it out in an attempt to get her to forgive me for spending the past four months using her like a puzzle piece that I cut all the sides off of in order to try and make it fit. Then I threw it in a trashcan when it didn’t.

“She’s going to wake up,” I tell him. And I really do believe it. I have to believe it. I need to believe that those big brown eyes I used to look into and wish were green will open again so that I can tell her that I did love her. Maybe not in the way she wanted, but in the only way I could.

And that if it’s what she wants, I’ll try again. I’ll treat her right this time, I’ll be honest and I’ll tell her that she’s beautiful and I’ll buy her flowers and I’ll never complain about watching her dog again.

And that if it’s what she wants, she never has to see me again. One word from her and I’ll pick up and fucking move to another town if she asks for me to. Anything she wants. But I need to do something. And I need her to tell me what that something is.

“She’s going to wake up,” I repeat, “A goddamn telephone pole isn’t enough to stop a girl as strong as Gen. She’s going to wake up.”

“I hope so. She only has a week before—“ And neither of us needs to hear the end of that sentence.


	41. Chapter 41

“We stem from a root planted in the belief that we are not what we were called." – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Resignation can be beautiful and devastating_

_When you lean back in your chair, fold your hands and accept whatever calamity is coming your way. When you throw up the white flag because you are a mouse and they are a snake and no matter how fast you run you can’t escape having your bones crushed by their fangs._

_There’s something beautiful about the acceptance of one’s fate. The complete and utter indifference to watching the sky burn up and rain ashes._

_But there’s something devastating about watching what’s left of your hope pop like a bubble a child blew back in the days when the worst thing you could do was stay up past your bedtime. When the bad was a hill and the good was a mountain. Before it was the other way around._

***

In that moment there is nothing more that I want than to fall to the ground. To curl up in the fetal position, fall asleep and never wake up. It seems like there’s a weight inside of me that’s dragging me to the ground and even further down than that, to a place where flames lick my skin liker overly friendly dogs.

My soul has hardened into something black and heavy, an anchor.

I stay there for too long, staring down at the man whose life I’ve just taken. I watch him scramble for final words only to have the blood he’s gargling trap them in his throat, along with his screams. I watch him flicker out like he’s a candle I’ve just snuffed. Wet my fingers, pinched the flame and…gone.

I feel higher than the heroin has ever taken me.

Past the very tip top of a Ferris wheel. Past the place where my fingers grasp cotton candy clouds. Past al the layers of the atmosphere.

I am up in outer space, orbiting the sun.

I am hanging over the flames of hell, with a soul so heavy it’s dragging me down.

The grandfather clock ticks ticks ticks. How long have I been standing here? I couldn’t tell you for the life of me. A minute? Twenty? I have grown roots that have dug through the carpet and locked me in place.

That is, until I hear the sirens.

 _There’s no way_ , I think to myself. The red and blue lights are coming up the driveway, I can see them through the windows, and I dash through the incredibly large house. I’m not thinking clearly. Smack and adrenaline keep shifting the world. I dash up a staircase without thinking, it never occurs to me that there’s no way I’ll find a backdoor up there.

 _There’s no way_ , I think again. This place is too secluded. Who on earth would’ve called the police? No one could’ve heard.

Unless…

I pause for a minute. And that’s when I hear it. Doing my best not to make a sound I find my way to the whispering female voice, hiding behind a big wooden door. Shaking and breaking. I don’t try the door handle. I’m sure it’s a bedroom. I’m sure it’s locked. I can make out a few of the words through the door.

_Locked in the bedroom._

_My boyfriend’s house._

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It seems that Michael Roche had company, something I hadn’t anticipated. I hear the door burst open downstairs. Glass shatters. Several footsteps and mumbled voices. They’re inside. It is only then that it occurs to me I’m upstairs with no way out of this labyrinth of a house.

I run. The house is like an endless hall of mahogany wood and warmly colored walls. Mirrors taller than me. Vases that cost more money than I make in a fuck. I can’t seem to find my way back to the staircase. At least, not until I hear the sea of footsteps running up it, then I know exactly where it is. But it’s too late.

It’s over. They’ve practically caught me already. I keep running in vain, in the insane hope that the rich bastard had more than one staircase. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t (And even if he did, it wouldn’t matter, cops are swarming the downstairs like insects, there is no way out, not for me). But he does have windows. Many of them

I arrive at a large one, a big half-circle. Clear as a diamond. Shaped like a sunrise. It makes me think of Jared for a reason I don’t have the time to contemplate right now. My heart is beating out of my chest, the gun still heavy in my hand. I want to drop it, but it seems stuck there. Like that gun has become a part of me, melding into my skin, searing my flesh as they fuse together.

Voices echo down the hall, chasing after me as surely as the people they belong to.

I take a few steps back. I stumble and my ass slams hard against the wooden floor. Scrambling back to my feet I take a final deep breath and then I run. I don’t hesitate when I slam against the wall of glass. And as I fall through the night sky my hand fly out, circling like pinwheels.

How the hell did I end up here? Just a couple of months ago my biggest problem was being embarrassed about the fact that I was a whore. Now I’m slamming against the ground in the backyard of a man I just put a bullet through the heart of.

My head hits the ground and my vision goes black like someone’s flipped off the light switch. It comes back in tiny spots but I don’t wait until I can see. I pull myself up despite my entire body protesting, despite the fact that it takes me three tries before I stop simple collapsing back on the blanket of grass.

My arm screams in agony every time I move but I don’t have time to worry about that. I make my way across the yard and into the woods, pausing only briefly to stuff the gun into a hole in the ground that I’ve come across—probably the home of some animal.

I watch, almost in amazement, as the gun detaches from my hand, seemingly ripping my skin as they separate, and then I spread a couple of fallen leaves over the hole just to make certain that it’s hidden from sight.

My hand is burning like it’s been ripped open. Logically I know that hasn’t happened, that the gun was never really a part of me and I didn’t really just tear of my skin, the way Fuller did Rachel’s. But now if not a time for logic. Now is a time for panic. The heart booming like a cannon, eyes wide, and legs running so fast they seem to detach from your body type of panic.

I keep running, or a close as I can come to it. Every step seems like it takes a mile. When I look back and can no longer see the house it feels like victory. I fall to my knees and let out a deep breath.

I made it. I fucking made it. I’m soaring.

My heart’s still beating overtime, but it feels fantastic and I let out a hysterical laugh. I don’t see it coming at all, when the police officer tackles me from behind.

I scream as he pulls my shoulder behind my back and cuffs my hands, roughly. His call of, “I got him,” to his fellow officers rings in my ears. He hauls me to my feet and my shaky legs drag me right back down onto the floor of the woods. I can’t help it. Whatever rush of adrenaline carried me before has vanished and now I’m made of jelly.

In the end it takes two officers to haul me back to the police car, now that can no longer walk. They tell me that I am under arrest for the murder of Michael Roche. And as they practically drag me I hear a familiar speech fill the night air.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can an will be used against you in the court of law…”

We pass a woman sobbing in a police officer’s arms. She is wearing a purple nightgown and her brown hair looks silky smooth despite the fact that she just woke up. Upon seeing me she tears herself away from the officer and begins to scream angrily at me. Her face reddening. Pointing emphatically.

I hear her words but do not register them.

As they lower me into the police car all I can think is that I am so completely fucked.


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, not a doctor so please just go with it.

“What I said was “I’ll miss you”. What I meant to say was “I love you”. What I wanted to say was that I meant what I said and it’s funny how all those things I could have said flooded my head after we said goodbye and I should have told you I’d be willing to hold you until my flesh crumbles into bone because I’m willing to die alone but god knows I don’t want to live that way.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_We live in a world where rarity is a beautiful quality._

_We spend days sitting in classrooms that are either too hot or too cold taking motes on things we don’t care about so that we can learn information we will probably never use—and even if we do end up using it we will probably forget it by that time and will have to relearn it. But come the last day when the number of those minutes spent in those classrooms where the temperature is never quite right is dwindling we suddenly miss all of it._

_The pressure of time passing has molded the sand we are holding into diamonds—and now we want, more than anything, to stop it from slipping through our fingers._

***

In those seven days before Genevieve’s metaphorical clock ticks out like a car that has run out of road on which to drive the days smash together, blending into one another. Hours of uncomfortable blue chairs and sympathetic looks from nurses, hours that last for centuries and still pass much too quickly for my liking. But there are certain memories that stick out like pins on a map.

Day One.

This is the longest of the days. The time per day lessens as the days go by like David Bowie turning the hands of the clock in _The Labyrinth_. The number of people has started out large—my parents leave after a few hours but there’s still four of us here waiting for her to open those pretty brown eyes.

I’m terrified of blinking. Afraid that if I miss a single moment than it will be the last moment Genevieve ever has. And the last of something is so very precious, even more so than the first.

Most of the time is spent with Gen’s mother making phone calls to family and friends and the rest of us sitting on the edge of our seats watching the heart monitor as if expecting it to suddenly flat line.

Eventually visiting hours are up and we’re all sent home. I dread leaving as much as I dread coming back.

Day Two.

Gen’s sister only stays for a few hours before her parents force her to go and finish some essay she has due for school. She insists that the teacher will understand but her mother shakes her head with a tsk and tells her that Gen wouldn’t want her to fall behind on her studies.

It’s sort of a mean card to play, in my opinion at least, but Gen’s sister goes nonetheless.

Genevieve looks like a spider surrounded by a web of tubes. She needs tubes now for everything, it seems. To help her breathe, eat, pee and basically function in general.

Every once in a while I’ll look over a Gen’s parents and feel as though I’m intruding on a very intimate time between them and their daughter. I feel like they’re afraid to express too much emotion or say certain things because of my presence.

This, I tell myself, is the reason I go to school on the third day when I could easily take off. It is not at all because of the cold hand that wraps around my lungs every time I look at Gen and think, _I put her there_.

Day three.

My junior year I took the SAT for the first time. A long, grueling test that took two weeks to score. Those too weeks were the longest of my life. I sat in the back of every class feeling delicate cracks form in my patience. I ate even less than usual and threw up even more. At the time, whether or not I’d done well on the test has seemed like the most important thing in the world.

Of course, there was a time when who I went to the eighth grade dance with had seemed like the most important thing in the world.

But this was ten times worse. I was jittery like I’d just chugged a can of Monster and a couple of Red Bulls to boot. My leg shook and I checked my phone incessantly for any messages from Gen’s parents.

 I received one, in the middle of calculus: “No change”

I don’t have to check the name to know that the informal message came from Mr. Cortese and not his wife.

It takes everything I have not to drive to the hospital and see for myself that she isn’t dead. I can’t shake the feeling that she’s gone and I just don’t know about it. That somehow, no on remembered to call me.

Day Four.

I call in sick from school and from my part time job at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I don’t go see Gen, though. I spend the entire day staring at the stains in my bedroom ceiling and throwing up for a reason that has nothing to do with any physical or mental illness I might have.

But rather, because guilt won’t seem to allow me to keep anything down.

Day Five.

I sneak in before school, about ten minutes before visiting hours technically begin and I plead with the nurse until she lets me in early. Because there are things I need to say to Gen that I cannot do with her parents listening.

I sit in Mr. Cortese’s usual seat, pulled up to Gen’s bedside. I take her limp hand in my own and it feels strange, like I’m holding a doll.

“I didn’t choose you because you were convenient, Gen.” I tell her; though the nurses have informed me her brain function is such that she probably cannot hear. “You weren’t convenient. You were almost as inconvenient as him. And you reminded me of Jensen and of the time I thought that I loved him and that maybe, just fucking maybe, it would work out between us. And I knew the chances were slim, just like I know the chance of you living is slim, but there are certain things you can’t really consider being true because them being true means the world shattering—which is something you just aren’t capable of comprehending until it actually happens.”

“And you reminded me of what a weak, blind, idiot I was for not realizing that Jensen and I were never going to work, and that sometimes world-shattering things happen no matter how badly we believe that they can’t. So you were anything _but_ convenient. And I led you on. And I made you think that I could love you because of how badly I wanted to. And how badly I wanted to get over him. And I chose you because even though I knew I’d never get over him, and even if it was painful sometimes, you were the closest I could ever to get happiness and I love you for that.”

I suck in air that I desperately need because I feel as though I haven’t breathed in years.

“And I am more sorry and more grateful than I could ever express.”

It isn’t much. A tiny twitch of her soft fingers, the smallest crease in her eyelids as they flutter. But I swear it’s there.

And I keep it to myself because I don’t want to give her parents false hope. But that is the moment I know that she will live. She may never forgive me. But she will wake up and she will live. And that is enough.

After school I visit Gen again and the doctor tells us that it appears as though she is showing increased brain function. Not enough to meet the standards the living will requires to extend her time, but enough to give us all a tiny, sweet, taste of hope.

I smile softly when he tells us, and I look over at Genevieve as though we’re sharing an inside joke.

Day Six.

The hope that had all of us riding high yesterday is starting to fade as the time ticks away. We all spend the night on that very last day. I don’t know when visiting hours stopped applying to us. All I know is that it’s eleven at night and the Corteses are asleep in chairs next to each other.

Mrs. Cortese’s head rests on her husband’s shoulder, her long dark hair covering her face, and Mr. Cortese’s head is tilted back against the wall, his mouth slightly open as he snores.

I get up to stretch and use the bathroom and on the way back to my chair I come across Gen’s doctor, who is checking out for the night.

“Hey, Doctor Beaver,” I call softly and he turns around. “I’m Jared, Genevieve’s boyfriend.” This lie has started coming naturally to me. The only other alternative is to tell people we broke up on the night of her crash and I’m just not strong enough for that.

“How can I help you?” I have to give him credit for at least trying to hide his annoyance.

“The amount of brain function Genevieve would need to display in order to give her more time, the amount that means there’s a real chance she’ll wake up, is that commensurate with the amount of brain function it would take her to move?”

“She moved?”

I nod emphatically, “The other day.”

“Did you see it?” Another nod. “Did anyone else, her parents or a nurse?”

“No just me.”

I can see the skepticism blooming like a flower in the spring. “Was it a big movement? What happened?”

I feel like such an idiot when I mutter, “Her finger twitched.”

The doctor sighs and I know what he’s going to say before he says it. “Jared, I’m sorry but we’ve been monitoring her brain function and we haven’t seen any levels that would indicate her ability to move.”

“But I—“

“I don’t mean to be rude but perhaps it was just your imagination. Now I have a family that I haven’t seen in over twenty-four hours and I would like to get back to them. Have a good night.”

He leaves me standing there in the empty hospital hallway with my hope in pieces on the floor.

Day Seven.

Gen’s sister is back. She is the cleanest of any of us. The rest of us all smell a little from spending the night in the hospital. They all take turns saying goodbye, going in and out of the room like it’s a merry-go-round or a revolving door. Mrs. Cortese asks me if I’d like to say goodbye to Gen but I assure her that I’ve already told Gen everything I need to.

She frowns in confusion but doesn’t respond.

The hours tick by and we all stand around the bed, watching Gen and hoping to see the tiniest bit of movement. I still haven’t accepted that what I saw the other day was my imagination. If I close my eyes I can still feel the brush of her soft skin against mine.

Gen’s mother cries. Her father and her sister don’t. I don’t. Not here, where people can see.

When the doctor comes in Gen’s father has to hold her mother back as she ties to push him away. Begs for him to give them more time. A minute. An hour. A chance. When that doesn’t work she pleads with Genevieve. To move. To wakeup. To do anything.

The doctor disconnects the tubes one by one, saving the one that helps her breathe for last. We all watch with our hearts in our throats, trying to block out the screams of Genevieve’s mom. Her sister starts crying then. Silent tears trickling down her rosy pink cheeks.

“Come on, Gen.” I whisper. Just one twitch. Just one movement. Just one breath.

None comes.

We stand there and we watch a sleeping girl suffocate.

In the aftermath, I push out into the hallway. My parents are there but I need to be alone. I walk past them and I don’t stop walking, navigating the hospital halls, almost wanting to get lost.

And as I walk I realize that I regret saying what I did, about how Gen was strong enough to get through this. Because I feel as though now I’ve insulted her, as though her inability to wake up makes her weak. But that’s not what I think. I think I’m the weak one.

Eventually I turn into a random room, crying too hard to see. I don’t care that there might be a patient in there, I simple collapse against the wall and sob into my hands.

“Hello?” A voice calls, but I ignore it. I know I’m probably freaking the hell out of whoever’s room this is, but I can’t bring myself to care. “Jared?” The voice calls again, and that snaps me out of it. That’s when I realize the voice is familiar.

I open my eyes and wipe away the tears.

There, sitting in the hospital bed with various body parts wrapped in gauze and one of his hands cuffed to the side of the bed, is Jensen.


	43. Chapter 43

“I’ve got poem after poem of what it’s like to miss a home cooked meal of what it’s like to wake up and feel  my arms draped over your absence, how I miss breathing in your skin like incense. I bet you never knew that when I’m sleeping beside you I wake up just to make sure I’m holding you.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_When you love someone you don’t automatically like all of his or her flaws. It still sucks that they talk too much about boring shit or that they have the worst goddamn taste in music that you’ve ever heard._

_That doesn’t go away. But if you love somebody you don’t want the traits to go away anymore. Not because you suddenly like them, but because it’s like playing Jenga—you pull out the wrong piece and the whole thing will come tumbling down, or at least, get rearranged. The person you loved won’t be the same anymore. So you’re okay with all the smears in the paint, just as long as the bug picture stays the same._

***

I’m not sure what drugs I’m on, but they must be damn good ones. I’ve never had a hallucination this vivid before.

Jared is staring at me. His face is red, eyes puffy, snot running from his nose. Objectively, he looks ugly. But I’m not all that objective and I’ve missed him so much that I can’t help but grin at the sight of him, however disheveled and psychedelic that sight may be.

I’m about to ask why he’s crying when he throws his head back and lets out a laugh. A far off, almost deranged, laugh that hurts my ears. Everything seems to, after having the gunshot echo through my head every noise feels like it’s scratching sunburn. It’s at about that point that I accept the fact that he’s real.

“Now,” he says, shaking his head, “I find you _now_. When I wasn’t even looking.”

“Jared?” I ask hesitantly and it seems as though I’ve flipped a switch because Jared jumps up. There isn’t anything in the room near enough for him to grab and throw but I have a feeling that if there was it would’ve hit me in the face by now.

“What the fuck, Jensen?” He screams, and for the first time, I’m afraid of him. “Do you have any idea how fucking worried I was? You just goddamn vanished! You just,” he makes a blowing noise as he motions outward with his hands in a gesture that I assume is supposed to mean ‘disappeared’. “How the fuck could you do that? And why, _why_ , would you tell me…would you make me believe that…” He’s been pacing, but now he turns to me, his teary red eyes meet my widened white ones. “Fuck you.”

And with that he leaves the room.

And I’m left sitting there, no way to get up or go after him. No way to try and explain my actions or myself. To tell him that what I did was for the best, really. That the chains around my ankles would’ve inevitably become too heavy to drag and I would’ve given up and gone back to sticking needles into myself eventually. Better sooner than later.

I want to call after him but I can’t find any words. Right now speaking is as difficult as trying to pick a Kleenex up off the floor.

It turns out I don’t need to call for him. Jared comes back about ten minutes later, eyes looking slightly less bloodshot and slightly less angry. “Where have you been?” He asks, quietly. And that’s when I realize that hidden beneath the flat, hollow tone, a river of lava still runs.

Though I can’t say it isn’t entirely undeserved, it still burns.

“Pellegrino,” I whisper.

Jared perks up. “What did he do? Did he kidnap you or some shit?” The concern makes me flood with warmth and it takes me a moment to answer, during which Jared presses further, “Jensen?”

“He didn’t kidnap me, he just, uh, had some guys beat the shit out of me, steal my phone, my cash.”

“Did they…”

I don’t need him to finish the sentence. “Rape me? No.”

Jared nods absently for a bit as the fog of concern clears and he crosses his arms. “That was six months ago, Jensen. You knew my address; you could’ve easily found me. You at least could’ve given me an explanation for bailing, you know, like a _decent_ human being would’ve done.”

“I never claimed to be a decent human being.”

“But you fucking act like it,” he uncrosses his arms and begins to point at me. “You act like every awful thing that has ever happened to you is somebody else’s fault. And maybe a lot of it is, but Jensen, there is an expiration date for blaming your problems on mommy. You could’ve found me and stayed with me, you could’ve at least _told_ me you were leaving, not let me stay up all night picturing you dead in a gutter somewhere, but you _didn’t_. And that’s not on your mother or on Pellegrino, _that’s_ on you.” He pauses only long enough to draw in a breath, which he clearly needs because his face is as red as when I first saw him. “And why the fuck are you handcuffed?”

And I can’t help it. I don’t know why him screaming at me has the affect that it does but I begin to sob uncontrollably. The reality that I will spend the rest of whatever life I have left in prison slams rather than sinks in. And maybe it should make it better that I didn’t have much of a life to begin with, but it doesn’t. And having Jared hate me is just the icing on the goddamn cake.

I crumble like a sandcastle in a rainstorm.

“I’m sorry,” are the only words I can choke out before I close my eyes, bury my head in one of my knees—the other leg has a cast on it, courtesy of my plunge out the window, and cannot be moved—and will the entire world to wash away and leave me the hell alone.

A few moments later, Jared’s arms come around me and as good as it feels I can’t shake the nagging feeling in my stomach that I don’t deserve his comfort. And I think he knows that too, but he’s too good a person to stand there and watch me sob, no matter what I’ve done.

“Jensen,” he whispers as my sobs quiet to whimpers, “Why are you handcuffed?”

“Sebastian’s father,” I say before I can think, and I wish I hadn’t, I wish I’d lied, but it’s too late now, “I killed him.” Jared pulls away from me as though he’s been burned.

“You _what_? Holy shit, Jen. You _killed_ him. You’re under arrest for _murder_. Jensen, that’s like twenty-five years to life. How could you…” He trails off and when he speaks next I can see the disapproval seeping into his voice despite his effort to keep it at bay. “Were you high?”

I nod. I sit there and wait for him to hate me, but Jared isn’t like me, I don’t think he knows how to hate. I don’t think he could ever look at me the way I grew up looking at my mother, no matter my transgression.

“Why are you here?” I ask eventually.

Jared runs his hands over his face. “Genevieve.”

“Our Genevieve? Graystone Genevieve? You met up with her afterwards?”

“She was my girlfriend, up until she died twenty minutes ago.”

I do not think I’ve ever in my life heard so many painful things shoved into one sentence. The idea of Jared with someone else brings pain that, though warranted, burns through me like an ocean wave made up of flames.

The idea of Gen being dead is inconceivable. Genevieve is one of the most alive people I’ve ever met. I close my eyes and I can still see the three of us raising our water bottles and stale milk cartons to cheer for our fucking awful lives. The sun on our faces. The big bad world so far away.

Me. Gen. Seb.

Was I really the last one left.

“Technically,” Jared goes on, mostly to himself, “She stopped being my girlfriend a week ago just before she wrapped her car around a tree because that’s when I dumped her. What the fuck kind of a person am I?”

He sounds so distressed that I answer the rhetorical question with a shrug and a shaky half smile, just to stop him from mentally answering it himself. “Well, you’re talking to a murderer so…”

Jared laughs again. A laugh without a spark of humor. “Life is such a goddamn mess.”

I tug on the handcuff that chains my wrist to the bedrail.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”


	44. Chapter 44

“Remember how no one ever really died in the wars we fought? Because each gunshot came from our finger tips and we never really kept them loaded just in case.” –Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_When you hear the phrase “I know him like the back of my hand” it isn’t hard to know what it means. It isn’t the kind of aphorism that needs explaining. There are about five, maybe six people that that phrase applies to, for me._

_But how well do we really know the backs of our own hands. Yeah, we’d know them if we saw them. Sure, we’d be able to differentiate them from the hands of others. And maybe, we’d be able to describe a few distinct markings: a mole here, a scar there. But, though we’ve seen our own hands more times than we can count—have watched them grow from tiny, chubby infant hands into the hands of the people we are right now, in this very moment—do we know every wrinkle, every crevice, every slight outline of the veins that jump beneath our skin?_

***

I had known going in that the bail would be impossibly high, so high that it wasn’t even an option, but the sound of the fifty thousand echoing through the courtroom as the judge slams down the gavel still makes my throat go dry.

It’s been three days since Jensen was arrested for murder. They waited a day longer than usual just to give him some time in the hospital to recover from his broken arm and sprained ankle before he had to show up in court for sentencing. Bailing him out had always been a pipe dream but even the decimation of a pipe dream can be painful.

We meet afterwards; Jensen looks so pale and fragile in comparison to that awful orange jumpsuit that he’s wearing. Sweat pours down his face. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s past the worst stages of withdrawal, but its effects still linger.

After Jensen’s state appointed lawyer leaves, it’s just him and I.

The room we sit in is damp and grey and reminds me of a basement. The only widows are musky and too high up for even me to look out of and there’s a guard standing just outside the room—too far away to hear us unless we talk loudly, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s reporting every single word back to some secret government organization or something.

“It could be worse,” I offer to Jensen, who sits across the table from me. His shoulders slumped and tired lines etching themselves into his face like he’s a canvas and they are charcoal. He looks much older than nineteen. And much younger. Or, wait a minute, is he twenty now? Jensen and I never really shared each other’s birthday dates. “No murder weapon. No breaking and entering. The only real thing they have is that you were at the scene. I mean, for all they know, it was the girlfriend who shot him and you ran because you afraid.”

“And when they find it?”

“Find what?”

“ _The gun_. It’s only been a couple of days, eventually they’ll go back with like, metal detectors, and dogs or some shit, and they’ll find it.”

“You don’t know that.” My voice drops down so that even the sound of water dripping that is coming from a leak in the room’s ceiling, is lower. “Where is it?”

“Woods. Near a tree. Under leaves somewhere. Does it matter?”

No it doesn’t, not really. Not unless I could somehow get into the crime scene. Which will never happen, even if I though I could sneak in, I wouldn’t. I’m not sure how long the sentence is for aiding and abetting a murder but it’s longer than I care for. Breaking the law is farther than I’m willing to go, but there is another option.

I have yet to tell Jensen about my visit with his mother, about his little sister. And I don’t reveal it to him just then, because I know that if I tell him he will ask me not to do what I’m about to do. He wouldn’t want to owe her any favors. And I would respect that.

But I can’t respect that, and I can’t not go to her. She’s my last hope, the only lifeboat left on the titanic. So as a result, I can’t tell Jensen.

It’s a long drive and it’s past dark by the time I make it to the Ackles’. I knock on the door persistently until Donna finally opens it, wearing her pajamas and holding her sobbing daughter. On her arm is an array of multicolored string bracelets. She was wearing them the last time I came here as well, she must not remove them often—I have a watch I feel similarly about. I’m about to broach the topic when the look on her face stops me and I remember why I’m here.

“Kid, you better have a damn good reason for this,” she warns.

“Believe me, I do.”

Donna sits on the couch again but I stand this time. She bops Mackenzie up and down, whispering to her softly, before directing her attention to me.

“I found him,” I tell her. Her eyes brighten and then dim.

“I take it he didn’t want to see me.” She nods to herself. “Makes sense. Why would he?” Her expression is stoic. Her voice, not so much. It waivers and breaks in strange places.

“It’s not that. He’s in prison. He doesn’t even know that you’ve…I mean, that you aren’t…”

“A whore,” she says, unfazed. She and Jensen really are related. Both blunt beyond belief. “Is it for heroin? Prostitution? Both?”

“Murder.”

A pause. “Do you think they’ll convict him?”

“Maybe. They um, they got him at the scene, but he wasn’t the only person there. And they still haven’t found the gun he buried in the woods, so there’s that.”

“But he did it?”

I swallow. “Yes.”

I wait for her to ask who or why he killed but she doesn’t. Instead she closes her eyes, pulls her daughter close, and begins to sing a soft lullaby. I watch as Mackenzie quiets and eventually sleeps, but Donna doesn’t stop singing, and she doesn’t release her tight grip on her daughter.

It feels like forever before she opens her eyes. “Why did you come here, Jared?”

“I need money,” I say, honestly, “For bail, for a decent lawyer. Neither I nor my parents are particularly wealthy—“

“And you think I am.”

“Well, no. But you must have some money saved up.”

“And you think I should give up my entire life savings for _this_ , for a murderer. I do have another child I need to think about.”

“That murderer is _your son_ , and you can’t claim innocence in this. You whored him out, got him addicted to drugs, and threw him out on the street.”

“I didn’t _throw_ him anywhere,” she screeches, and then immediately pauses to soothe her daughter, who had almost awoken. “Jensen left of his own accord. I take responsibility for the hooking and the heroin but he didn’t get arrested for either of those. He got arrested for _killing_ someone. Who’s to say he doesn’t deserve to go to prison.”

The worst part of everything she’s saying to me is that it sounds so very similar to what I said to Jensen not too long ago.

It’s only after I leave the house with Donna’s adamant ‘no’ still reverberating through my mind, that the very real possibility that Jensen will spend whatever remains of his life in jail stops being surreal and starts being a fact.


	45. Chapter 45

“People are just buildings made of bone, who collapsed every time they're made to believe they were meant to stand alone.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_The world is all made of recyclables._

_Rivers that run into oceans, trees that are built into Ferris Wheels._

_Everything is made from everything else. This ever-churning wheel of life that breaks down the atoms from one thing and turns them into something else. Nothing is ever irretrievably lost. Dead things become soil. From that soil flowers bloom. The skin that falls off your body turns to dust. The water you drink is rain that fell from the sky. It’s embarrassing but sometimes, really bad times, I take great comfort in the fact that we are all made from stardust._

***

So I’ve got another roommate, which I’m so fucking excited about, because the first two went so goddam well. _So_ goddamn well that one of them is the reason I’m in this shithole. Well, that’s not really fair. _I’m_ the reason I’m in here, scrubbing floors and eating pasta that tastes like overcooked shit. And really, how the hell do you fuck up pasta?

It’s more of a Detention Center than a prison, so the hardcore criminals—the one’s that would hold me down and take whatever they wanted despite the screaming and the bleeding—aren’t in here. But they’re waiting for me at the Federal Correctional Institution in Ray Brook. I have nightmares about them, more often than not.

So anyway, I’ve got another roommate—Ty Olsson. At least this one’s straight, or so he appears to be. But I thought the same thing about Jared when I first met him, hell I’d been certain, and look how that one went…

Ty doesn’t talk much. No one here does really. That makes distracting myself from my upcoming trial rather difficult. It gives me way too much time to think, when the lights have been turned out and we’re lying in our hard-ass bunk beds, cold despite the fact that it’s nearly summer.

Although, for the first time in my goddamn life it appears there’s someone to visit me. I’m allowed ninety minutes of visitation a week and Jared seems to like taking up every last second of it.

I like to seem to be annoyed by this.

Usually he just talks about whatever book he’s reading or the new episode of some TV show I’ve never heard of and I actually enjoy listening, but today, midway through a rant about something or other, he pauses and says, “Jen, I need to tell you something.”

And I’m waiting for him to say

_You were caught on video when you shot Roche._

Or

_They found the gun, Jense._

Or anything along the lines of _Sorry, you’re screwed._ What I get is none of the above.

“You have a little sister.” The words catch me completely off guard. I’m certain he’s just spouting nonsense. Stringing random words together in a barely coherent babble. But then he keeps going. “And a mom. I mean, like, you know you have a mom, of course. But she’s stopped hooking and doing drugs and hooking, cause of, um, your sister that I mentioned. So, yeah, you, uh, have a little sister.”

A brief pause. My mouth wide open. The phone I’m holding nearly falls out of my hand.

“Her name is Mackenzie,” he adds.

“ _You went to see my mother_?” I shout into the phone. If Jared’s face wasn’t behind a screen of glass I’m probably punch him. “My mother. The woman who shot me up and whored me out and you two are best buddies now, or some shit.”

Jared’s eyes darken. “I only went to see her after _you_ left, because I thought she might know where you were.” Over the past few weeks Jared has become fond of playing the ‘You Left Me’ card. He’s not very blatant when he does, but that almost makes it worse.

_Pay attention. You might be a little more grateful, you know. I don’t have to help you, especially not after what you did._

_I’ve been sleeping for a lot better lately. I’d been really anxious and worried the past couple months, cause of, well, you know._

I almost wish he would just come out and scream at me again. Or hit me. Anything if it would stop the occasional jabs he takes.

“And I only went to her again because I’ve been trying to get enough money for a decent lawyer, you know, so you don’t spend the rest of your life in jail for murder.”

Ah yes, the ‘You Killed Someone’ card has also become a favorite of his. Along with ‘You Sell Your Body To Pay For Your Heroine Addiction’. Basically, Jared has been winning many an argument as of late.

So I have a baby sister named Mackenzie who my mom deemed worthy enough to give up heroin for.

 _I wonder what that says about me_.

I look around the prison, it reeks of body odor and urine and everyone else on the phones has either a tattoo or a piercing somewhere I can see.

 _I think I know exactly what it says_.

I hang up the phone even though Jared is still in mid rant. I don’t have to ask him whether my mother coughed up the money. She didn’t. Fifty thousand dollars is much more than I’m worth, especially to her.

The guards escort me to the courtyard. Unlike the playful blues and yellows of the Graystone Rehab Courtyard, this place is filled with brick reds and moldy greys. There’s plenty of chatter but no laughs as people play card games and shovel what’s left of their lunch into their mouths like it’s a gourmet meal.

I wonder if I’ll come to feel that way about it in time. No way in hell. I’m not staying in this place, I just can’t. If I’m convicted, even if it is just for twenty-five years, I’m slitting my wrists before I spend a year in this dump.

I’m about to sit down at one of the filth-covered tables when I hear a whistle. “Hey pretty-boy.” It’s not the worst they’ve called me. Definitely not the worst I’ve been called. But it sets me off.

The actual rapists may be behind a different set of bars but there are men here who just get their kicks from teasing the hell out of others. In one motion I’ve turned around and driven my fist into the nose of the man who called out for me.

Big mistake. His friends descend upon my like a swarm of locusts. I tell myself not to panic, that the guards will come with their batons and break it up, but they seem to be taking their sweet time.

Someone hits me so hard I feel blood fill my mouth and I spit it back in his face. I hear a curse.

Finally, the guards begin dragging them off of me. I’m barley conscious as they drag me to solitary. It’s my first time there. I have a sinking feeling that it won’t be my last.


	46. Chapter 46

“Failure was never nearly as important as the fact that we tried.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Does it ever surprise you just how far you’re willing to go._

_Like, in theory, there are so many things you wouldn’t do. Ever. Maybe things you’re morally opposed to or things you think are stupid. Like egging a house or committing murder. But when push comes to shove you shove down your qualms the way you do the trash in a garbage can in order to make more room._

_You do whatever you said you wouldn’t. Matter of fact, isn’t there an exception to every rule. There’s always some random (probably unrealistic, but still) circumstance in which you would do that thing you never thought you would._

_And isn’t it a little scary, knowing that there’s no real limit to what we’ll do._

***

So I’ve changed my mind.

 I don’t know if it was Jensen’s mother taking my last hope and stomping on it like it was an insect, or if it was the guard informing me that Jensen is in solitary because he started a fight, but it is becoming very apparent that Jensen will not make it in a Detention Center, let alone a Federal Prison.

This knowledge is only worsened by my discussion with Jensen the next day, which is less of a discussion and more of me speaking to a statue.

He doesn’t say a word the entire time and he looks like hell. He has a cut on his lip and his right eye is so blown up that if I didn’t already know what color it was, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. The skin around it is mostly red and yellow with a slight tint of blue and it makes me wince every time I look at it.

I try everything I can to get a reaction out of Jensen, short of banging on the goddamn glass, but in the end it turns out to be a miracle I even got him to pick up the phone.

When the guard comes over and tells me that visiting time is up I almost feel relieved.

So anyway, I’ve changed my mind. We barely have a chance of getting Jensen freed now and if the police find the gun that he’s hidden, covered in his fingerprints, he is completely screwed. As I get ready—putting on green clothes so that I blend into the woods—I can’t help but think of what Donna Ackles said: Jensen might deserve prison.

And maybe he does, but not for the rest of his life. And he certainly doesn’t deserve what would happen to him in there.

I feel sort of silly, dressing in the colors of camouflage: a deep green shirt and brown jeans. I feel like I’m playing a child’s game, and I try to hold onto that feeling because it’s much better than facing the reality of what will happen if I get caught sneaking into the crime scene.

I park on the side of the road about half a mile away from the house and I trek into the woods. I don’t have a metal detector or anything so this will probably take a while.

The yellow tape comes into view first, and then the house.

I wait for a moment or two at the edge of the yellow tape and it feels like I’m about to step over this invisible line between security and risk. I reach out and I’m about to wrap my fingers around the tape when I realize that maybe leaving a fingerprint isn’t a good idea.

Chances are they couldn’t do anything with it; chances are they wouldn’t even check here for prints. But I’ve always been overly cautious.

Anyway, I get down on my stomach and dig my elbows into the dirt to propel me forward. Soil stains my shirt and pants and I laugh. I feel like a soldier crawling in those movies and despite the danger I feel sort of light. The adrenaline bursting through me and making my veins jump.

I pull myself to my feet and dust of the excess dirt.

The driveway is on the side of the house so I can see the single cop car that resides there. The lights are off, from this distance it almost looks like its empty and the police just left it behind. Whatever the reason or it being there the sight of the car makes the hairs on my neck stand up.

My mom used to say that if I couldn’t see her then she couldn’t see me. If the reverse is true I better be careful not to draw attention to myself.

I walk carefully through the woods. If I look really closely and push a couple of leaves out of the way I can see the faint imprint of Jen’s footprints. I follow the path they create, my eyes darting up to check on the police car every couple of seconds. I check around ever tree near the path, bending down and groping the ground.

Finally, too close to the house (and by consequence the car) for my liking, I come across a time when Jensen’s prints stray from the straight path and go off to the side just a little.

 I know I’ve found it. I can see a pile of leaves that fills an indent in the ground.

I quickly fall to my knees and begin to dig.

When I get to the bottom of the hole two things become apartment: 1) Jensen buried the gun here, and 2) I’m too late. I can see the imprint of the gun in the dirt, where it used to be. I can see the shape of it like it’s some sort of fossil. I don’t know how long ago the police found the gun but it’s probably locked up in evidence somewhere, somewhere out of my reach. Sitting in a box waiting to be brought out and used as the metaphorical key to lock Jensen behind bars forever. The only thing actually in the hole is a dirt-covered string bracelet that is probably years old.

“Goddamn,” I say, much louder than I should. A couple of things happen in quick succession after that. You see, I’d been so excited by my discovery of the gun—which wasn’t even actually there—that I hadn’t noticed when a police officer climbed out of the car and lit up a cigarette.

But he noticed me when I cursed too loudly and caused a deer that was in close vicinity to dart deeper into the forest.  He dropped the cigarette and tapped on the car’s window, presumably alerting his fellow officer, before he came jogging towards me.

“Hello?” He called. “Anyone there?”

So he hadn’t _seen_ me just yet, but he would if he kept coming.

For a while I was frozen, watching him run towards me like it was happening to someone else. Then the reality sank in. I jumped to me feet and sprinted in the opposite direction, cutting straight through the trees, feeling thorns scratch at my face.

“Hey! You there, stop!” He began to run full force now, I could hear his footsteps coming as I pushed away branches that obscured my path. I tripped over a protruding root and cursed as my forehead smacked against a rock.

By the time I was up and running again there was blood dripping into my eye and making it nearly impossible to see. With nowhere else to go, I jumped behind a couple of thick bushes and held my breath. Insects were buzzing around me and I felt one land on my bare arm but I didn’t dare move to look or flick it off. My vision was cut open by branches and tiny leaves and severely obscured by the blood that covered my right eye but I could see the blue uniform that was eventually joined by another.

“You saw someone?” the second cop asked, his voice higher than I would’ve thought coming from such a tough looking man.

I couldn’t see well enough but I think the cop that had been smoking nodded.

“You sure it wasn’t another deer?”

“Not unless the deer was fucking six feet tall. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, we lost him, let’s just go back to the car, tomorrow we can request more officers be placed here.”

“Fuck,” the cop cursed as he turned around. “This is the second trespasser in a week. It’s the fucking press that causes this, you know. People read about murders and shit in the papers and decide that makes them fucking detectives. This is a crime scene, not a fucking zoo!” He shouts the last part to no one in particular.

“Yeah, well, hopefully the increased security will ward off any unwelcome visitors.”

Their voices fade off and after a minute or two my entire body slumps with the exhaustion of having kept it still for so long.


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, some people might find this disturbing (though you could probably say that about the story as a whole). 
> 
> Happy (or maybe not so happy, but hopefully the good kind of not happy) reading :)

“We told ghost stories never realizing we would one day ourselves become ghosts.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_You are going to die._

_You and me and everyone else. We came from dust and we will, inevitably be returned to dust. Six feet under ground, having the bits of our flesh eaten off by insects that managed to crawl through the holes in our wooden coffins. We are standing, blindfolded, with sand slipping through our fingers and being devoured by the ever-hungry waves around us, a sea that stretches on to eternity. And we’re trying so desperately to cling to something too small to grasp. We are locked in a car on a one-way street speeding down a road with no signs and no turns and no choice, not really._

_We’re all headed to the same goddamn place. And if we aren’t enjoying the ride, why not press on the gas?_

***

The words, “They have the gun,” are as good as a death sentence as far as I’m concerned. The reality of that is not as apparent to Jared as it is to me though. He keeps talking, rambling

_Maybe it wasn’t the cops…_

_It still might not be enough to convict you…_

_Maybe if we plead guilty…_

It’s the last one that makes me slam the phone back in the holder so hard that it falls out again, banging against the glass wall that separates us before dangling limply in the air, but I make no move to fix it.

It’s over.

My preliminary hearing was earlier this week. I could see the disgust in the judge’s eyes, he didn’t know for certain that I was a prostitute and I had never confirmed it, but he _knew_. At least, he looked at me like he knew. And the guards made sure only to touch the sleeve of my prison uniform, not my skin. Never my skin.

Like he could _catch_ the killer, could _catch_ the whore.

No one was surprised when the judge slammed down his gavel and informed me that I’d been indicted. The arraignment hearing is tomorrow, where I’ll supposedly either enter a plea of guilty or not guilty.

My lawyer said he tried to get the charges brought down to murder in the 2nd degree, tried using my lack of sobriety during the time of the crime to my advantage. But the judge was not having it, especially not since I’d brought the gun with me and the substances in my system were illegal.

I’d been expecting to be brought up on charges for the heroin use, but I hadn’t had any in my possession and the police seemed more concerned with the murdering aspect of the whole shebang. 

Sometimes I’d close my eyes and imagine turning the gun on the judge. I imagine the way his head would snap backwards with a terrible cracking noise, like a whip. I’d watch him slump down from his pretentious perch on that black leather chair and I’d see the surprise on the guards’ faces as they ran from me and I’d feel

_Euphoric_

It is at moments like these when I think that I’d be better off locked up. Or at least, the world would be better off.

I go through the rest of the day on autopilot. I can see than man that I got into a fight with a few days ago sending me looks, as if daring me. I can hear the crass comments when I walk by

_Whore_

_Bitch_

_Trash_

I don’t think he actually knows I was a prostitute, thank god; the comment is probably just general. But it stings nonetheless, and it turns the tip of my ears red with anger and humiliation. But being trapped in a tiny cell with grey bars and grey walls and not a single closet in which to hide any of my monsters is not worth the brief satisfaction I’d get from hearing the asshole’s nose crack as I drove my fist into it.

At least, it isn’t yet. I know I’m going to snap eventually, all the more reason for what I’m about to do, I suppose.

I eat dinner alone, in silence, the way I usually do. I don’t fit in here. I didn’t fit in at Graystone either. The only place I’ve ever really fit in is the last place I want to be. Like I said, all the more reason.

            Curfew comes and the light goes out. The sawing sound of Ty snoring on the bunk above me is all I can hear and suddenly every little detail of this place—the shit I used to tell myself wasn’t so bad—Ty’s snoring, the fact that I sleep on the goddamn bottom bunk, the fact that I eat alone like some fat chick in middle school, the need for heroin that causes my throat to go dry—makes me want to run screaming. All the more reason.

            Ty is a deep sleeper: it would take a lot more noise than I’m going to cause in order to awaken him, so I should be fine on that front. I look around in the darkness. I’ve spent all day thinking about how I could pull it off so the looking around is really just to make certain that everything is in place.

It doesn’t feel like it’s my hands that pull the bed sheet off of myself, and then pull it off of the bed. Not my hands that twist is around and around and around until it’s long and tight, almost like a rope.

We have a single metal toilet in the cell. From it, a pipe stretches up the wall and along the ceiling. It takes several tries and a lot of re-twisting to get the sheet to slide through the space in between the pipe and the ceiling. I tug to make certain it will hold my weight.

The pipe creaks and shifts a little, but doesn’t lose it’s grip on the ceiling.

I tie one end of the sheet around the pipe and the other end of the sheet to the middle of it, creating a loop, and then I tug on that for the same reason. It holds. I climb up onto the toilet.

Deep breaths. In and out. In and out.

I think about the loop, as thought it were a portal, and where it might lead. Somewhere better than here? Maybe. Somewhere worse? Unlikely, it can’t get much worse. Nowhere? I think that’s the possibility that scares me the most. A big black nothing. But wherever it is, I’ll end up there eventually anyway. All the more reason.

I think about what I have to live for. My little sister? I’ll probably never meet her. Jared? He doesn’t want me anymore. All I’ve done since I met him is fuck up his life. I lead him on. Bailed on him. And now I’ve caused him to break the law, entering crime scenes illegally. All the more reason.

I just sort of wish that I’d told him I loved him. Because I haven’t said it to anyone other than my mom, and it was a lie. She’d ask if I loved her with sour breath pressing sticky kisses to my face after a man who’d fucked me had paid her and I’d nod and try not to cry. But Jared I do love, and I don’t think I really realized it until now. But I can’t stay here any longer and I have nothing to leave a note with.

So I whisper the three words into the foul smelling air of my prison cell and I hope that he hears them in sixty or so years when he follows me through the loop. Of course, he’ll probably have a wife, or husband, and kids and maybe even grandkids by then. He probably won’t even remember me, won’t care. All the more reason.

No one will care. And it would seem that I’m all out of reasons to stay and drowning in reasons to go. So I stick my neck through the loop and I step forward until my feet find only air. And I feel

_Euphoric_


	48. Chapter 48

“If anyone ever tells you to quit. You got to make them wear a diaper on their mouth Because man they're just talking shit" -Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Isn’t it often that the straw that breaks the camel’s back is one too small to see?_

_After a lifetime of prostitution and having drugs shot into one’s skin, after being shot and beaten and broken and told that all of it is something you deserve, the very last straw isn’t some colossal explosion, a tornado or a blood-soaking tempest, it is a single hand-gun. It is a roommate’s snoring. It is words shouted by a stranger._

_It could be anything and everything. It could be you. And isn’t that the worst part? That anything you do could be that straw. Could twist the sheet. Could take that final step into nothingness._

***

The words, ‘suicide attempt’ replay over and over during the phone conversation I have with the police officer so loudly that I can’t make out many of the other words, except for which hospital Jensen was sent to.

He’s on suicide watch, not to mention the fact that his nose shattered when his weight dragged the pipe that his body was dangling from away from the wall and he smashed his nose against the ground. His roommate found him like that the next morning, sprawled face down on the cool concrete floor.

When I close my eyes I imagine him like one of those cats with the flat faces, except that his face is covered in blood.

Goddammit.

And I should’ve seen it coming, but _fuck_ , how do you see something like that coming? I wonder if this is how Jensen felt after Sebastian died. I wonder if he felt the same way about Michael Roche that I now feel about Donna Ackles—and I think that if I could put a bullet in her, I would.

Instead, I look up all the Donna Ackles in the phonebook—there are four in total—and when I hear the familiar voice of the mother of the man I love telling me that she can’t come to the phone right now I suck in a breath. The dial tone beeps in my ear.

“Your son tried to kill himself,” I say, as calmly as I can, which isn’t very calm at all. My voice is low, but shaky, like it’s threatening to be a scream. A tiger in a butterfly net. “He tried to kill himself because he thinks the world’s better off without him in it. I know because I used to feel the exact same way about myself. And maybe it doesn’t mean anything to you but you’re the only person I know who could feel that way about themself and actually be right.”

I hang up but I feel as though I haven’t said nearly enough. I consider calling back and saying more but I don’t think that I could stop sobbing long enough to leave a coherent message.

It is twenty-four hours before I’m allowed to see Jensen. By now, the hospital has become a familiar place for me and I nod to Doctor Beaver when I walk in, I still think the guy is sort of an ass, but I was raised well and I have manners.

The nearer I get to Jensen’s room the farther away I want to be from it. I feel like I’m seconds away from losing my shit. I feel like I don’t know how to talk to him anymore. Like he is a stranger, a person in Jensen’s body that I’ve never met, because surely whomever slid his head through a self-made noose and let himself dangle as the sheet cut off his ability to swallow, his ability to breathe, was not the boy I held hands with in a group therapy meeting months ago.

It _wasn’t_. It couldn’t be.

A nurse walks out of Jensen’s room as I enter. I half expect him to pretend to be asleep, but he doesn’t, he just stares unblinkingly at the wall in front of him, as though he’s watching a movie on a screen I can’t see.

His nose is tilted but not crushed, and an angry red color; he has a white bandage strip across the top of it. He looks like he did when I first met him. Like the world was so cold it put out any fire left inside of him.

“Hey Jen.” He doesn’t answer. I repeat myself. He doesn’t answer. “How are you?” I ask, by now I’m not expecting an actual answer. But I am expecting a scoff; maybe for him to get angry and shout, “How the fuck do you think I am you moron?” But there is nothing.

The worst kind of nothing.

I fight the urge to scream at him. How can he not care? Does he have any idea what he did to me? But I hold my breath and remind myself that as much as I want to hate him I can’t. I look at him and I see a child who never had a childhood and I want to gather him in my arms and buy him a baby blanket and some action figures for him to play with, and I want to show him _Flight Of The Dragon_ and _The Last Unicorn_ , and admit, despite my embarrassment, that the last one was my favorite movie growing up. And I want him to make fun of me.

I want to give him the childhood he never got, because everyone should get to watch _Toy Story_ twice—once before they’re old enough to understand the jokes and once after.

But it’s too late for that, and all I can do is talk to a boy that refuses to speak and pretend that every second of silence doesn’t dig in through my skin and rip away at my soul.

I pretend it all through this day and the next. Jensen doesn’t speak at his arraignment hearing, but he doesn’t have to. He and his lawyer decided days ahead of time to enter a plea of not guilty. We are informed of the evidence and witnesses intended to be used. Sure enough, the handgun is on the list, right at the very top, like they’re taunting us with it.

A trial date is set for a week from now.

We are so screwed if Jensen doesn’t get his voice back soon, then again maybe we could switch the plea to, like, insanity or something. We’re even more screwed if we lose this case. Jensen has made it clear without saying a word what he intends to do then. And he’s smart enough not to fuck it up a second time.

I sit next to him in the back of the police car as we ride from the courthouse to the jail. Jensen will be closely monitored, I’ve been assured, but the thought of putting him back there makes my throat tighten.

“Did something happen, something specific, to make you wan to…you know?” I ask, to no avail. He doesn’t respond. But he looks at me like the answer is “My whole life.” And I feel like an idiot for asking.

Just before he’s taken back to his cell I lean in and brush my lips against his. He makes no move to kiss back but his eyes are wide when I pull away and I think about his expression the entire ride home.


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So i'm not a cop or a lawyer or anything (obviously) so please don't be too harsh...Thanks for reading!

“She was too busy teaching me how to watch horror movies and laugh… She'd put a hand on each scar and say ‘If you really want to get scared watch the news’” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Every lie blooms from a truth, like the little seeds produced by plants, spreading around and sprouting even more._

_Getting scattered by the wind like snowflakes or dust. That’s what makes them so easy to believe. Because at the heart of it all, don’t we want to believe people. Through the wars and the espionage and the terrible things we’ve seen people do, don’t we want to believe that they really are good? Don’t we need that, so that we can believe that we, ourselves, are good?_

_So we cling to those tiny bits of truth like trees in a hurricane and we pray that if we hold on hard enough we won’t get carried away in the winds of half-truths, broken promises and omitted details._

***

The ill-fitting suit is a rental that Jared picked up for me. It is the color of ashes that settle at the bottom of the fireplace. It hangs off my body, sagging in odd places.

My arms are so thin that I can wrap my entire hands around them, and I do so, crossing my arms, as I enter the filled courtroom—filled almost entirely by grievers for the apparently well-known Michael Roche. Two police guards flank me like the wings on a plane.

Judge Williams has dark skin and a look on his face that means business. He is the same judge I’ve seen the last two times I’ve been here and when our eyes connect I expect a subtle nod of greeting but receive none.

Not from him, anyway. Jared sends me a nod and a smile from his seat in the church-like pews that fill the room. He’s been acting like things are okay, like we’re together again. He’ll press brief kisses to my lips, temple and forehead. Nothing forceful but definitely present. Like a child raising a hand rather than calling out the answer.

I think he just feels bad that I tried to off myself. And I think he finds the fact that I haven’t spoken a word since I tried to hang myself more unnerving then he lets show.

I wonder if he thinks I’m losing my mind.

I’m brought into the dock, through a waist-high swinging door made of the same mahogany wood as everything else in the room. I’m seated in a chair and my handcuffs are removed.

As I rub my chaffed wrists I think back to the bathroom a few minutes before. Rubbing water on my face and staring at my reflection. So pale. So skinny. I looked like I was dead. A walking skeleton. Maybe I am dead. Maybe the person that woke up in the emergency room wasn’t really alive.

I imagined smashing the mirror into a million tiny shards and using them to paint red lines on my arms. I imagine a river of red pouring into the room and I imagine drowning in my own blood. Thick red filling my lungs. I reached forward to brush my fingers over the cool glass, my breath fogging it, just as the cop banged on the door and told me to hurry up. I scurried out of the bathroom pretty quickly after that.

            The judge begins to speak, his deep voice filling the small courthouse. I zone out and look over to my lawyer. By all appearances my lawyer is confident. All appearances accept for the incessant tapping of his fingertips on the edge of his seat, where no one else can see.

I stare at his fingers and feel an inexplicable rush of hatred toward him. I remember all of the things he said to me in preparation for this meeting. His advice on how to behave when I was called to the stand.

I didn’t listen. It wasn’t like I actually intended to speak.

            The first day is boring. The only people who are called to the stand are police officer who testify about different things: my appearance on the scene, my attempt to run from them.

My lawyer crafts a made up story and the only things that sell it are his confident tone and the tiny bits of truth weaved into the strands of lies. He claims that Mr. Roche hired me—me and another prostitute, an older woman. (It has since come out that I was a prostitute and apparently Mr. Roche has quite the history with them, which his sobbing girlfriend admits to on the second day of my trial, though she adamantly insists he wasn’t gay). He claims that it was the other prostitute that shot him, but she got away through the door on the right side of the house.

If I were up for making noises as of late I would’ve clicked my tongue in disappointment. Even I could’ve spun a better story than _that_. We’re sure to lose and

even if I win this case I will probably be brought up on charges for soliciting sex for money now that I’ve confirmed my participation in these illegal activities. My lawyer explained to me earlier that I’d most likely just receive a fine and maybe a few months in jail if that is the outcome, but still. It’s a shitty goddamn story. Full of holes.

            _Who was the other prostitute?_

_Why did she kill Roche?_

_Why wasn’t any of her DNA left behind?_

The first two questions are brought up by the police and in response my lawyer gives them a little smile, like he knows something they don’t, like there’s and ace up his sleeve. There isn’t, but I suppose false bravado is a skill of his.

I’m starting to think I should’ve gone with the insanity plea.

The second day is worse. Longer. Hotter. My sweat makes my ugly suit stick to my skin like a tattoo.

It’s on the third day that they bring in the gun. When I look at it I can feel the cool metal in my palm. Feel the kick as it pushed away from the bullet that flew out of it and into the chest of Michael Roche.

The bald forensics guy, Mitch something or other, sits on the stand and pulls at the cuffs of his navy blue suit. He wears small glasses at the tip of his large nose and he talks with his hands, gesturing wildly about the type of gun and the make and model and gunpowder and bullet, etcetera.

My lawyer asks him about it. The type of certification someone would have to have in order to get that type of gun. Certification I lack, because I’d paid with my body rather than a credit card. I could still feel the sting in my knees and the choking sensation in the back on my throat.

He asks if there are any fingerprints on the gun.

The answer is yes. _Shit._

He asks if they belong to me.

The answer is no. _Well that’s a lucky break, they probably belong to the guy I bought it from._

He asks where they found the gun.

Buried in the woods.

Where in the woods?

To the right of the house.

That one brings me up short, and everyone else in the room, it appears. Someone must’ve moved the gun, or lied about where they found it, because I ran straight back behind the house, not to the right of it. My eyes flick to Jared, thinking maybe he lied, but he looks as surprised as I do.

            I never would’ve had enough time to bury it there and then get to where the cops arrested me, which my lawyer explains. The first hole that is in their story rather than mine. Not enough to win but enough to give a spark to the grey fog I’ve been wading through.

            When my lawyer sits back down next to me I ask him what the hell just happened, not with my voice but with my eyes. He answers with the same sly smile he gave the police. Maybe he has an ace up his sleeve after all.


	50. Chapter 50

“If we consider that the universe is never ending then we're not even a microbe. We're like a death threat from a pacifist. We're nothing.”

 – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Have you ever considered just how little you matter, and how much you matter all at onec? I’ve talked about this before, how actions ripple outward spreading like wildfire or diseases that turn people into zombies._

_It’s kind of amazing how much we can affect, considering how small we really are, we are less than a pinprick on a planet that is less than a pinprick on a universe that is one of many._

_There are seven billion of us alive now, but before that there were more people and after us there will be more people. Until the sun goes into it’s red giant stage and burns the earth to bits, we will almost definitely be here. And by that time we will probably have the technology to go somewhere else. Like, hey, I hear Pluto’s nice this time of year._

_Humanity is an infinite ocean. But we are all connected like insects wrapped in a spider web. Maybe not directly connected, but that strand is connected with that one and that one connects with those two. Every wave someone causes pushes out through the rest of the sea, losing power until its barley noticeable, but always present._

***

It is on the seventh day that all the pieces click into place.

The sunlight streams through the window and spreads out across the wooden floor. It illuminates the cracks and chinks in the old hardwood. The air is heavy and difficult to breathe. All the trial days have seemed to mesh together—all except for the day they brought out the gun and admitted that they found it in a place where Jensen couldn’t have been.

The police argue that it could’ve been moved—and it was. But they stop arguing that when Jensen’s lawyer states that if someone tampered with the crime scene then none of the evidence they gathered there proves anything, and things like one of Jensen’s hairs that they pulled off of the welcome mat should be discarded as well as the gun.

I smile. It is the first time the other lawyer looks flustered.

The only problem is that I don’t have a goddamn clue as to who moved the gun, and why. How many other people care enough about Jensen to break into a crime scene?

Perhaps it could’ve been his lawyer, but does he really care that much about winning the case? It’s fairly high profile, what with Roche’s notoriety. But would he gain enough from winning to make it worth the risk of aiding and abetting a murder? I doubt it.

The time ticks by and eventually it’s time for the first recess of the day. I follow Jensen into the bathroom; a guard waits outside the door. I keep my voice low, “Do you have any idea what the fuck is going on?”

I know better than to expect a verbal answer, but I do receive a subtle shake of the head.

“No idea who moved the gun?”

Another shake.

 _Well, fuck_. Not that I really expected Jensen to know anything, but still it would’ve been nice.

I watch Jensen rub water on his face and then rub his hands together under water so hot it turns them red. He doesn’t seem to notice. His green eyes meet with those of the reflection in the mirror and I can’t help but wonder what he is thinking about. If he regrets his attempted suicide. If he regrets the murder he committed.

It scares me that I don’t think he regretted either.

On my way out of the bathroom I lean down and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck before heading back into the hallway, and then the courtroom. It occurs to me that even if Jensen gets off with no punishment I don’t think he will ever really by Jensen again. Not the one I met. This Jensen looks like a skeleton held up by puppet strings. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still beautiful, but he reminds me more of a wilting flower than a blooming one.

And there are days when I am still so angry. When I hate him for being an addict, for being a prostitute, for being a murderer. When I hate him for choosing heroin over me, and when I hate him for knowing he’d make the same choice if given another chance.

And there are days when I hate myself for loving him.

As I retake my seat it crosses my mind, and not for the first time, that maybe being together isn’t the best thing for either Jensen or myself.

The Judge begins to speak, his eyes dark and impatient. It begins to rain outside and it looks strange and out of place because it’s still so sunny out, like the rain is pouring out of the sunlight rather than from a cloud.

It’s Jensen’s lawyer’s turn to call a witness.  He seems almost smug, a spark in his brown eyes. I haven’t seen the list of witnesses he intends to call. I assume Jensen has but I doubt he actually cared enough to read it so the name that’s called out shocks us both.

I shake my head and try to figure out why on earth Jensen’s lawyer would’ve done this. Sympathy, maybe? People might pity Jen enough to understand that the events leading up to the pulling of that trigger were a tornado comprised of things that Jensen had little control over.

But it still seems like so very strange of a thing to do. So very strange of a person to call. And it feels like something out of a movie when everyone turns simultaneously to watch the guards open the doors at the back of the courtroom. Even the stoic Judge Williams has his lips slightly parted, his teeth so white they almost flash, and is leaning forward in his seat, perched with his elbows resting on the wooden railing in front of him.

Jensen, for his part, looks horrified. He looks frozen. Not just that he can’t move, but he literally look so still that I’m pretty sure if I were to run over to his seat and push him with all my might he wouldn’t budge an inch. Like the air around him is made of glass.

The person that walks down the center row of the court cleaned up well since I last saw them. Their shoes tap the wood as they walk and when they pass me I catch I whiff of coconut soap. We might eye contact for the briefest of seconds before blue eyes flick away and back to the path that the individual is walking.

As they settle on the stand they push a strand of hair behind their ear. A bible is brought to them and they place their hand on it.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“I do.” Even their voice sounds more elegant than before and they look years younger thanks to what I assume is a combination of makeup and nice clothes.

After that Jensen’s lawyer walks up to the stand and addresses it’s occupant by name, before asking, “Did Jensen Ackles murder Michael Roche?”

The person leans forward to press their lips to the tiny microphone that protrudes from the front of the stand. They clear their throat and then give a definite ‘No’. It does not shake it does not falter.

I hold my breath.

“And how do you know this,” the lawyer asks. I can’t see his face, his back is turned, but I can feel something radiating off of him like excitement radiates off a child on Christmas.

I think back to the string bracelet I found when I snuck into the crime scene and searched for the gun, and I think of who I know that wears those.

“Because I killed him.” Donna Ackles concludes before leaning back in her seat.


	51. Chapter 51

“Once upon a time, we were young. Our dreams hung like apples. Waiting to be picked and peeled.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_A child changes everything._

_Like, you’re looking at this pyramid and you’re on top. Or maybe if you’re an extraordinarily selfless individual, someone you love, or some god, or maybe you’re country will be on top. But then a kid comes along and everything is rearranged._

_Not only do they end up at the top of the pyramid, but they dominate the entire thing, until you, like, aren’t even on it anymore. And everything you want comes after what they want. And everything you do is only if it matches up with what they want to do. And in exchange for giving your entire pyramid to someone you get to listen to sobbing and change diapers and buy a whole bunch of baby shit that’s necessary for their survival and mental well being._

_I’m not ready to make that trade. And neither are most of the people who do._

***

I am sitting at a table with three people I never thought I would sit at a table with individually, let alone together: my mother, my lawyer, and the man I love.

My lawyer leans back in his seat. He looks smug. I’m sure I would be too, if I were him. He came into this case thinking he would get beat down like a fat kid in an endurance race. But with every turn it seems his chances of coming out of this notorious case a winner increase. The impossible position of the gun was the first step. The confession of my mother was the second. And after her arrival more evidence was shown—dirt from the crime was found in a pair of her shoes. And the kicker: her fingerprints were found on the gun.

There are still several details that have to be hammered out. My mother is set to reappear in court tomorrow to discuss exactly what happened that night, and why she allegedly put a bullet into Michael Roche.

            As we sit my eyes scan her, though she avoids looking at me. Her hair is blonde, but a dirty, natural, color, not the bleach blonde of the hair dye she used to soak it in. She’s gained weight, as well, too much weight for a smack addict to sustain.

By all appearances she is clean. An immaculate businesswoman with a formal blue dress and black heels that emit echoing clicks when she walks.

            She looks like a stranger.

            My lawyer does most of the talking, with Jared and my mother nodding along every once in a while. She pretends she doesn’t notice my staring at her, but I’m not exactly being subtle.

Eventually I open my mouth, my voice is dry from weeks of disuse, and I speak the first words since I put my neck through a makeshift noose and stepped into nothingness, “Can we have a minute please.”

It is only after the room falls silent that I realize I have interrupted my lawyer midsentence. I don’t care. My eyes never leave my mother’s. Her blue eyes are the only things that haven’t changed. They are the icy type of blue.

            The lawyer opens his mouth to speak but Jared puts a warning hand on his arm and nods at me. His smile is poorly concealed.

            The two leave the room without a word.

            Finally, my mother has no choice but to look at the monster she created. There is something unfamiliar in her eyes.

“They said you haven’t’ been speaking recently,” she offers after a moment. I ignore her.

“You realize that even if this plan works you’ll spend the rest of her life in jail. You’ll never see your daughter again.”

The last words are said with venom that I don’t mean for them to contain, but I can’t help it. Somewhere out there is a little blonde girl living the life I never got to have, and I can’t blame her for that, but I can blame my mother.

“I’m not a good person.” My mother says in conclusion.

“And you think I am.”

“I think you could be. A better one than me, anyway.”

There is nothing I can say to that. I know that if she does this for me than I am on the hook. If she gives up her life for me than it will be my responsibility not to waste mine. Not to drop to my knees for a sweaty wad of cash. Not to be at the beck and call of a cold silver needle.

There is no emotion when my mother speaks. But I think that somewhere lower down she feels something. Some tug of motherhood that she cannot deny, despite her selfishness. “You’ll need to raise her.” I don’t have to ask who she’s talking about.

I laugh once. It booms around the large empty room and I see the guard that’s standing in the corner flinch.

“I need you to promise me you’ll look after her,” my mother says again, this time with fervor.  “If I do this for you I need to know she’ll be safe.”

 _I need to know she’ll be safe_.

Because she is so important.

“Who’s her father,” I ask.

My mother’s bravado falters. I smile just a little. I don’t need to see myself in a mirror to know I look something like a snake. Perhaps, a snake that has been run over a couple time, but a snake nonetheless.

She’s about to tell me that it’s none of my business but I think she realizes before those words make it out that such a response will not elicit a good reaction from me. So she swallows audibly and admits, “Jeffrey.”

Knew it.

Fucking knew it.

“Where is he?”

“Dead.” A better person might feel a little guilt about smiling the way I do at that answer.

“Overdose?”

“Car accident.” She pauses, “He was high.” She pauses again. “I was pregnant.”

A soft anger simmers, a protective instinct over a sister I’ve never met. “Were you in the car with him?” She doesn’t answer. There’s no need to. I drag the toe of my sneaker across the concrete floor, creating a scraping sound.

“So do you promise?”

I scoff. I can’t take care of a child. The idea itself is farcical. I can’t even take care of my own goddamn self. As much as it stings to admit it, my mother is probably a better parent to that little girl than I could ever be.

And I would be trapped. No way out. If I decided I couldn’t take it anymore there would be no way for me to escape. Not without striking a match and dropping it on the world of a one-year-old.

            It is not a responsibility I can handle.

            “Jensen?” My mother persists as I slide my seat back and stand up. The guard walks over to escort me back to my cell.

            “You’re right.” I tell her as I turn and begin to walk away.

            “About what?”

            I don’t bother turning around. “You’re not a good person.” I think that’s as much of an answer to her earlier question as my mother needs.


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how sparse the chapters have been lately. It was my prom week, so I was really busy. Anyway, I should be back to posting about three times a week :)

“I swear to whatever God I can find in the time I have left, I'm going to remember you.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Because we can’t know the extent of our actions, we can’t really know what we’ve done. Maybe that penny we picked up off the street is the reason 9-11 happened. Maybe the fact that we took the bus rather than walking is the reason that girl down the street got kidnapped. Who the fuck knows?_

_Life is this impossibly large web of actions and reactions, too large to see the entire thing._

_So how does blame play into that? How close do two interconnected points on the web have to be for one to be directly responsible for the other? Or does distance not matter? Is intent what really determines who is to blame? But then is every unintentional thing no one’s fault? Because sometimes it sure as hell is nice to have someone to point at and scream, “You did this!”_

***

I am hiding in the ‘cold’ isle of a grocery store, freezing my ass off because all I’m wearing is a thin white shirt and khaki shorts.

The reason for my hiding—or _reasons_ , rather—are walking toward the checkout and I let out a sigh and rub my arms rapidly. I’m getting odd looks from the other shoppers as they pass by, steering their carts and snapping at their children to keep away from me—the tall strange man hiding behind the isle and peeking at a couple. I could care less.

The thing is, I hadn’t meant to miss it. Honest. I just got caught up in the whirlwind of madness that is Jensen’s murder trial. It is only now that it’s looking like he might get off for reasonable doubt and his mother’s claim that she never stopped hooking, that when Michael hired both her and Jensen and that she had killed him in an attempted robbery, but that the cops were there before she could take anything is starting to look less like a fairytale devised by a five-year-old and more like the truth with each piece of evidence revealed, that I remembered.

Genevieve’s funeral.

And I hadn’t attended. I hadn’t even been to her grave in the two months she’s been dead. Guilt snaps around inside of me like an angry rattlesnake as I watch my dead ex-girlfriend’s parents pay for their groceries from my hiding place.

Shit. Wait a minute. At the moment, it appears that only Genevieve’s _parent_ is paying for groceries—her mother. Which means that her father is—

“Jared?”

Un-fucking-believable.

I turn around and plaster a false smile on my face. “Mr. Padalecki, I didn’t expect to see you hear.” I wince at my feigned cheery tone but the smile on my face does not drop, nor does the one on his. Equally as plastic.

He’s lost weight. I notice, belatedly. Mr. Cortese had always been a beefier man, much like my father, only Gen’s dad has hair, but now he looks gaunt.

“How are you?” I ask, though the answer is painfully obvious.

“About as good as can be expected.” He puts his hands in his front pockets and begins to rock backward and forward awkwardly. I wonder just how bad it would be if I turned and bolted just now. Ran through the store and through the sliding doors into the sun, got in my car and never turned back.

I could ensure that I never saw the Corteses again. I could leave town. Maybe even the state. For a moment, I consider it. It would be worth it to skip out on the conversation I’m about to have, but it is a pipe dream. And nothing more.

We stand there for a while. The odd looks from people passing by do not cease.

“We missed you at the funeral.”

I suck in a deep breath. “I am so, so—“ He holds up a hand, cutting me off and I stand there, expecting him to scream or punch me. He is looking at me like he sees me, like he can tell what I did to his daughter and I wish the floor would split open and swallow me up.

“I know you and Gen weren’t serious,” he begins, “I always knew that. I just wanted to say thank you for staying with her, when she got sick. You didn’t have to do that.”

I should nod. Perhaps even smile at the veneration. I should try and twist his words around in my head until I believe them, until they are as good as gospel. I should search for the logic that says I was a good person and grab onto it with all my might.

I do none of the above.

“I broke up with her the night she crashed.” My eyes sting, but I don’t cry. I want to, though. Genevieve was a good person. She deserves tears. I cried more when the family dog Harley never came back from the vet. The comparison makes me feel sick. As though how little I cried is a measurement of how little I cared.

Maybe it is. I didn’t attend the funeral, after all.

“I thought you might’ve,” He says softly, “You looked so damn guilty, I thought you might have cheated on her or something.”

“No,” say vehemently. “Never.” I never would’ve cheated, not on anyone, especially not Gen.

“I know,” he father assures.

“She’s dead because of me,” I hate how true those words feel as they fall out of my mouth. Her father shakes his head at me.

“Yes, she is,” he mutters, “but that doesn’t make it your fault. Believe me, I’d love to blame you. I’d love to blame anyone so that I can stop blaming myself for not being a good enough father. Every once in a while I wonder if she did it on purpose and I…” He drags his hand down his face.

“The police said it was almost definitely an accident, that the car slipped. The road was wet.”

He laughs dryly and takes his hands out of his pockets, “That don’t stop the wondering though. That isn’t a guarantee.” A breath. “Look, boy, what I’m saying is…maybe it was Gen’s fault, for driving when she was so upset. Maybe it was my wife’s fault for not getting her a better car. Maybe it was my fault for not being a good enough father, or maybe it was the fault of whoever built that telephone pole.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Isn’t it?” We share a smile. “But you see, don’t you? Just because you caused something doesn’t necessarily make it your _fault_.”

He looks over and sees his wife at the exit, waving him towards her. With one last pat on the back he says, “Well, I better get going. See you around kid.”

“See you around,” I echo. I watch him head back over to his wife. They look sad, but it was the type of sad that would get better, the type of sad that could be lived with.

As I pay for my groceries and make my way toward the store’s exit I can’t help but notice that the air is a little lighter, easier to breathe.

 


	53. Chapter 53

“But the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that: "Nothing is for certain". And the interesting thing about that is that it ensures that the principle itself can't even be a fact.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_As you grow up, your perspective changes. Which is great and everything but it makes it hard to know if you’re seeing things the way that they actually are. I can hear an idea and think that it’s amazing, but five years down the line the same idea might sound like the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard._

_The world is always shifting, and we are as well. And change is good, don’t get me wrong. But it never stops. And it can become difficult to look at things and wonder if what you see will be what you see in a year or ten. To feel like the world is distorted, like you’re looking at it through a kaleidoscope._

_You can never really know. And even to the bravest, not knowing can be terrifying._

***

It is the very last day of the trial. I should feel terrified, or perhaps hopeful. I should feel something, shouldn’t I?

Instead I sit in the awful wooden chair that my ass has probably formed a dent in by this point and I watch the ticking clock and all its indifference. No day has ever dragged as long as this one.

I jump when my mother sits in one of the pews, just behind me. Her dress is the color of autumn leaves. Her lipstick and nails are as well. I’m sure that someone who doesn’t see her as well as I do would think of her as beautiful.

“Revoking your confession?” I ask. She will, I’m sure. Now that she knows I won’t care for her precious baby girl she won’t go through with it.

“Not at all,” she assures in a voice much too happy for both the situation and the mood I’m in.

“What? Why not?”

The judge is taking his seat. Court will be in session soon. “Because I know you, Jensen. I know that you’ll take good care of Mackenzie.” I snort, but she isn’t finished yet. “You of all people know how wrong it is to take out your own pain on a child. You wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did, would you?”

With that, the gavel is slammed and the witnesses are called. I sit in my uncomfortable chair thinking over my mother’s words. I know psych-tricks when I hear them, but she isn’t entirely wrong. And if it is the last thing I do, I will not be my mother.

I watch her walk up to the stand and recite the same story she’s been telling since the very first day she arrived here. I don’t think everyone buys it, but they must buy some part of it, because at the end of the day when the head juror stands and reads out the verdict the words ‘Not Guilty’ fill the tiny courtroom.

Jared and my lawyer cheer, as do Jared’s parents, who have shown up for the last day of the trial. I wonder how they feel about their son dating a convict, not that we’re really dating anymore. The guilt will wear off after a while and Jared will go his separate way.

My mother and I sit there, in the midst of the chaos.

I can hear the other lawyer trying to argue with the judge. I can hear Roche’s girlfriend screaming at me, “I know it was you, you pig! You’ll pay for this!” I can feel Jared clapping me on the back.

I feel exhausted.

In the aftermath, my mother, my lawyer and Jared meet in the same dull, dusty room. The lawyer sets up a couple ground rules: I shouldn’t leave the state, I shouldn’t do anything suspicious, I shouldn’t kill anyone else (the last one is sort of implied).

After he’s done he leaves, with one last hesitant handshake. He has to know that my mother’s story is bullshit because he looks almost disgusted when he shakes my hand—the hand that pulled the trigger. What he doesn’t realize is that the killer isn’t my hand, it is something further down and harder to see and much more powerful than a hand.

When he’s gone my mother takes out an envelope and hands it to me. She says it’s full of information—bank account numbers, passwords, information about my sister—anything that requires a signature she’ll take care off when it comes up, I’ll have to visit her in prison.

She’s about to leave when Jared says, “Wait.” He pulls me aside to where my mother can’t hear.

“You’re not gonna like what I have to say.” _Oh god_. “But I think you should forgive her.” Had I been drinking something I would’ve spat it out.

“Why should I do anything for her?”

“I don’t think you should do it for her.” He breathes in through his teeth. “You’re just so _angry_ at everything and I think that this could be a really good chance for you to have a clean slate. But you can’t do that if you keep hating everyone who wronged you.”

“So that’s your advice, just let all fucking go. It’s fine that she got me addicted to smack and it’s fine that she let me get raped for money and it’s fine that Pellegrino beat the shit out of me and robbed me and it’s _fucking dandy_ that Michael Roche made my friend hate himself so much he slit his wrists.”

“Jensen,” he sighs, “of course it’s not fine, but you can’t put a bullet in all of them.”

I have a sick urge to respond with, “Says who?” but I don’t say that. There is a part of me that wants them all to pay but I’m starting to realize that I’m not feeding on that hatred so much as it’s feeding on me.

“Is this little heart to heart over now?”

I walk back to the table without waiting for an answer. I can feel Jared’s eyes burning into me the whole way there. I think about telling him something reassuring. Letting him know that I see his point, but I bite my tongue.

I lean down and pick up the envelope. It feels heavier than it actually is. I know by taking it and walking out of here I am making a promise to my mother to care for my sister, to never relapse, to be a father to a child when I never had a father of my own.

But I take the envelope and I walk out of the room without another word to anyone. If and when I do decide to forgive my mother she doesn’t deserve to know about it.

Jared knows the way to the house that is now my own, or will be once all the paperwork is straightened out, so he drives. (There is also the small matter of me not having a license. I’ll have to get one sooner rather than later). It is small and disheveled, but it has a sort of homeliness that the grey shithole I grew up in lacked.

The girl who answers the door for us is named Nicki Aycox. According to my mother she has been my sister’s babysitter for years. She has a short blonde hairstyle, a kind smile and a baby in her arms. A baby I’ve seen before.

I feel Jared squeeze my shoulder and I hold my arms out to take the child. She is warm and heavy and perfect with long eyelashes and a dusting of freckles on her chubby cheeks. She is everything I can never be but instead of the jealousy I expect, I feel a rush of warmth at the knowledge that _I_ can be something to her.

And that is enough.


	54. Chapter 54

“We had hearts like boulders, we played Sisyphus trying to push the other’s uphill, but we told our hearts: Be still. Let no one move you, let no one lift you, let no one get through that stone wall you call skin, let no one in, because people are clumsy and they’ll break you, take you apart in the study.” – Shane Koyczan

 

_Jared_

_I don’t think everyone keeps other people out because they’re afraid. Some people aren’t afraid of being hurt, but rather, of hurting others. So they erect walls and board up windows and stick chairs under door handles. They lock up their hearts and throw the keys into the currents of bottomless rivers, too deep to swim in._

_But some people tie a key around a string and hang it from a ceiling. And whoever wants it can stack up bricks to build a staircase. You just have to care enough to work. Just have o want it enough to reach._

_And people do this, not to keep everyone out, but to see who’s worth letting in._

***

“For the first time in forever it feels like things are going well. I mean, not great, but alright.”

“What parts are not great?”

I lean forward in the chair to give me more room for gestures when I talk, “It’s just that…he won’t let me around Mackenzie much. I mean, he’ll let me be alone with her and whatever, it’s not that he doesn’t trust me with her, he just won’t let me around her too often.”

Sam Ferris leans forward and well and perches her chin on her hand. “Have you thought about _asking_ him why that is?” Her eyes widen as though this is some outrageous idea and damn, even her motions are sarcastic. I have a feeling she and Jensen would like each other. If I could convince him to go to therapy, which I can’t. Not only does he not want to go, but he doesn’t have time. He already works two jobs.

“Are you worried about him? Do you think he’s not caring for her properly? That all the stress is too much for him? You think he might relapse?”

“I was for the first few weeks, but he’d never do that to Kenzie. He loves her, like really loves her. I haven’t heard him complain once.”

“So why the distance from you?”

I lean back in the soft red chair and tilt my head forward slightly in agreement. I can tell our hour is almost up. There’s no clock in here, but you develop an awareness of these sort of things, and after all these months of seeing Samantha Ferris at least once a week I’ve almost got it down to a science.

I can tell the time is almost up when Samantha’s glass of water is about halfway gone and when she begins to rub the wrist with her watch on it absentmindedly.

“Maybe it’s not physical distance so much as emotional?”

“Are you going to elaborate on that?”

“No.” She shot me a smirk, her green eyes twinkling. “If you want to know you’re just going to have to _talk to your boyfriend_. He is your, boyfriend, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I say automatically, almost taking the word back when my brain catches up, but I don’t. He _is_ my boyfriend. We kiss, among other things, neither of us is seeing anyone else; we get lunch together—me, Jen and sometimes even Kenzie. We may not have spelled it out in so many words, but we are in a relationship.

“Then ask him.” She takes a sip of her water and checks her watch. “It’s time for my next appointment.”

I nod and climb to my feet, putting on my jacket as I do so. “See you next week, doc.”

“I’ll see you next week, Jared. Please send my next victim in on your way out.”

“Will do.”

The next ‘victim’ is actually Lauren from way back at the rehab center. She starting taking sessions here about two months ago, she looks a lot better than she did. Her brown hair, which was always hanging limply or pulled back into a tight, painful looking, bun at rehab is now curled and bouncing around her shoulders as she taps her foot in waiting. She wears sundresses and shorts instead of sweaters and sweatpants that cover every inch of skin. And instead of the pinched expression she now has an open and friendly grin.

I wave her in as I walk through the waiting room and out to my car. I don’t actually want to talk to Jensen, but I know Sam will give me hell if I don’t so I resolve to bring it up sometime before my next session.

‘Sometime before our next session’ ends up being that night at dinner. Jen has just gotten home from his job and so I’m cooking dinner for him and Mac: Shrimp scampi. That’s my night, most Wednesdays. School, session, cook dinner. It’s the only weekday that I have off work.

I’m bouncing Mac on my hip as she chews on a Barbie doll, and I’m asking her all about the doll’s name and personality and job. Kenzie doesn’t really use words so much as sounds, but she giggles a lot and every once and a while I think I hear something discernable as a word from the English language.

She’s banging the doll against my shoulder lightly when Jen gets up from the couch, his seat on which allows him a clear view of the kitchen, and asks for her, holding out his arms. A frown mars his handsome face.

I’m about to hand her over out of reflex, when instead I ask, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want me to give her to you?”

“Um, because she’s my sister, practically daughter, and I want to hold her.”

I sigh and hand over Mac, who mumbles unhappily at the movement, until she finds herself in Jensen’s arms. Then she holds up her Barbie doll, as if for his assessment.

He takes it from her and smiles down at her, “She’s very pretty, Kenz.” He says softly. Love bleeds into his tone and I can’t help but smile a little, but I don’t forget the conversation.

When Jensen makes his way back to the couch and settles with Mackenzie on his lap I follow him. “Why don’t you want her around me?” I figure that Jensen will respond to bluntness rather than finesse.

“I don’t _not_ want her around you. You were just holding her.”

“You know what I mean.”

He blows out air in a way that makes his cheeks puff up. Then he reaches forward and picks up the remote from the coffee table. The television show (some cop show, I don’t know which one) freezes.

I sit in the armchair and I remember being in a similar position except with Donna on the couch holding Mackenzie. I remember feeling like I had to breathe in every detail of that encounter and commit it to memory.

“It’s not that I don’t want her to be around you. I just don’t want her to get attached to you. She shouldn’t get attached to temporary things.”

“And I’m a temporary thing?”

“Yes.” A breath. “It’s not that I want you to be…but, I mean, I’ve got a kid now, and I’m fuc—“ he cuts off and glances at Kenzie, “messed up in so many ways. And you’re—“

“In love with you.” I cut him off. “Things like that don’t go away.”

“Even after…”

“Even after,” I assure him.

“If I never said it before I’m so sorry for leaving you.” His green eyes are wide with worry but I smile comfortingly and reach out to put a hand on his thigh.

“I forgive you.” And I did.

There’s been a lot of forgiveness going around nowadays. And it feels good. If sunlight were a feeling it would be this.


	55. Chapter 55

“I value you’ll be the only one willing to check the pilot light in this furnace I call a heart, wondering if some part of me can still offer warmth. Maybe it’s just you, but I swear it’s getting hot in here.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_Attraction doesn’t go away, like flipping a switch and the darkness disappears. It’s still there. It’s still there because it doesn’t need to go away._

_It stays because it is a test. You fall in love and yet you’re still attracted to others because that attraction is a multiple choice quiz, and whenever you check ‘yes’ the answer to ‘Are you in love?’ becomes ‘no’. If ever you decide that the brief spark you feel is worth more than the flame you’ve been carrying for years then you didn’t really love that flame, now did you._

_Not if you’ll watch it burn out just so that you can spend a night feeling something new._

***

It is strange to be happy. Not that I‘m always happy, there are times when I want to smash Mackenzie’s Barbie doll against a wall, times when it all feels like too much. But even when I am awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a crying baby when I’ve just come home from working twelve hours straight I feel happier than I ever did before.

Even when I was high off my ass. Because there was always something off about that kind of happiness. It felt so goddamn synthetic. Like how shitty chocolate can taste like plastic. But it’s as close to chocolate as you have.

I was flipping through my journal the other day, the one from rehab, and I came across something I wrote in between the obscene drawings and ranting about how much the place sucked. And it felt like the person who wrote it is a different person than who I am now.

Many months ago in a brightly colored room filled with many darkly colored people I sat hunched over my notebook scrawling:

 

_It is the same day._

_It is the same incessant alarm that rings the moment he closes his eyes_

_It is the same vomit stain on the ratty bed he wakes up in from that time when he got so high that everything inside of him wanted out_

_It is the same walk to work on a lonely sidewalk where the only color is from the car headlights_

_It is the same day._

_He is tired._

_He is tired of the pretending that he isn’t tired of waiting for cars he does not know and wearing clothes that do not fit_

_He is tired of feeling hands rubbing his skin so hard that it all sheds off and he is left a skeleton_

_He is tired of walking home the same exact way he got there and feeling like he isn’t going anywhere at all_

_He is tired._

_It seems just like always._

_It seems just like always when he hears the slap of water on the sidewalk and he pulls up his hood against the rain_

_It seems just like always when he passes the street lamps that dance with the trees on the other side of the road_

_It seems just like always when he steps to the right to avoid a puddle of rain that always forms in the same place_

_It seems just like always._

_He is done with like always._

_He is done with like always so he stops in his tracks and turns all the way to the right_

_He is done with like always so he steps forward feeling the moment the sidewalk drops out from under him_

_He is done with like always so he stops a few feet before the yellow lines and turns to watch the headlights grow nearer_

_He is done with like always._

Pretty dreary shit, huh? I wonder if anyone would’ve seen my suicide attempt coming, had they read this. I hadn’t seen it coming.

I take Kenzie to the park—it is my day off. I push her on the swing and I watch the way her blonde hair swishes in the wind and as my eyes scan the playground I see giggles and curls and army men buried in sandboxes. Tears that come from a scabbed knee or a stolen toy, tears that can be rectified with a promise of ice cream.

And I also see the pictures of Rachel Miner when they found her with sliced open eyes and no skin. I see the gravel as my face slams into it, the heavy weight of Pellegrino’s men’s fists thudding against my back. And I see the power I felt when I pulled the trigger as though it were a physical thing: a deep dark beautiful thing.

There is a man on the other side of the playground watching me. He looks vaguely familiar. There’s something about the shape of his face that just…Holy shit, is that Chad Lindberg?

It looks like it, and he smiles as he heads towards me. I haven’t seen Chad since I was fifteen and his family moved away to Oregon or somewhere. He looks so different I wouldn’t have recognized him if he wasn’t walking right towards me. He’s grown up well, his hair is messy but he pulls it off. He’s sweating and it makes his dark grey tee shirt cling to his skin, his clearly defined chest.

I suddenly feel rather inadequate and I wish that he hadn’t seen me. I’m sure I have bags under my eyes from lack of sleep and I’m still much too scrawny to be considered attractive.

I lighten my pushes of Mackenzie so that I can talk without worrying about her falling.

“Jensen? That you?” He asks. I force a smile and we shake hands. “I haven’t seen you in forever. I’m in town visiting my cousins,” he points towards two dark-haired girls that are sitting in the sand box. “It’s good to see you.” Well, at least he doesn’t seem to know about the trial. He had been on the other side of the country so there was a pretty good chance he hadn’t heard but I was still so terrified that he had.

“Harder,” squeals Kenzie, looking up at me petulantly. Her tiny freckled nose is crinkled.

Chad leans down and sweeps her up off the swing. I have to fight the urge to protest. I hate it when people other than Jared or Nicki, the baby sitter, hold her.

“And who are you, little missy?”

Mac’s eyes widen, she is suddenly shy, but she makes no move to get out of his arms. It is only after she giggles and blushes at each one of Chad’s attempts to talk to her that I become almost certain that she has a crush on him.

 _Oh god_ , it’s much too early for me to be worried about my sister and boys.

“She yours,” Chad asks.

“My sister. How about you: You married? Have any kids?”

“No I’m um,” he looks me over, “not really that way inclined, if you know what I mean.”

“Me neither.” The words literally fall out of my mouth. I almost wish I could take them back but Chad’s looking at me like…it isn’t just lust in his eyes, there’s something else too. He doesn’t look at me and see the grime I’ve been covered in since I was thirteen. He doesn’t look at me and just want to fuck me.

He nods absently at my statement, “So would you, uh,” it’s endearing how he suddenly seems nervous, “like to get coffee sometime?” He hands me Kenzie and I have to refrain from laughing at the disgruntled look I receive from her, as though it’s my fault Chad is no longer holding her.

I look up at Chad, who is so very oblivious. I love Jared, I do. And I don’t want Chad, but I want the way he’d make me feel so badly. I want to pretend to be clean, to be normal even just for a little.

But then I think about how he would look at me if he knew about my past, about my trial. And I’m certain it would be with fear and disgust. And the fact that I’ve found someone who knows me and never looks at me with fear or disgust darkening his eyes is something that never stops being amazing.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Chad, “I don’t think so.”

I don’t want someone who sees through the grime. I want someone who sees past it.


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who thought it was going to be puppies and rainbows from here on out...sorry.

“I was somewhere, in the middle of nowhere watching the sunrise over a stop sign placed down the centerline of a highway filled with sudden turns for the worse.” –Shane Koyczan

_Jared_

_Revenge is an unquenchable thirst. As long as you’re searching for it what you find will never be enough. Often, I believe that the best revenge is not needing any at all, being so unaffected that you see no reason to strike back. You go on with your successful life and you hope that the knowledge that they meant so little to you that you didn’t even mind when they hurt you or betrayed you is enough to hurt them._

_Unfortunately, this is often not enough for people. And more unfortunately is the fact that oftentimes, the people we are seeking revenge on aren’t the only people who get hurt._

***

Later, Jensen assured me that he didn’t blame me. And I believe that _he_ doesn’t blame me. But had I not grown so much in the past year, had I not learned the difference between cause and fault I might’ve never stopped blaming myself. I might’ve made a noose out of a sheet and stepped into thin air, like he did.

It was a Wednesday, which meant that I usually went to Jensen’s after my appointment with Dr. Ferris. It was so hard to find time to spend together that in the two months since Jensen moved into that house, I never missed Wednesday night. And that night, the night it happened, was the first night I was even late.

I was late because after my appointment I received a phone call from my mother saying that my father needed to speak with me, and that it was important.

I remember knowing before I set foot in the house I grew up in, what happened. My mother was never any good at keeping secrets.

She answers the door with a whispered “I’m sorry, sweetie. It just sort of slipped out.”

“How is he taking it?”

“I honestly don’t know. He hasn’t said a word, just asked me to have you come here.”

I nod, I can tell that she wants to say more but my father’s deep voice calls from the family room, “Sherry, is that him?” In lieu of a response my mother leads me into the family room. There is only one couch, a blue frayed couch, which my father sits in the middle of. I choose to stand rather than to sit next to him. Surprisingly, my mother chooses to stand as well, and I take a small comfort from that.

The television isn’t playing but my father stares at it as though it is. “You’re mother is under the impression that you and, um…”

“Jensen,” my mother offers and my father nods, but he looks pained.

“You’re mother is under the impression that you and _Jensen_ are, more than, um…”

I suddenly feel angry at the disgust evident in my father’s tone “He’s my _boyfriend_ ,” I say defiantly. My chin is tilted upwards.

My father’s eyes finally leave the empty television screen and meet mine. It is clear that I am not the only one in the room that’s angry. It is also clear, from the way my mother is trembling, that she wants to leave the room, but stands by my side, her expression stubborn.

I have never loved her as much as I do in this moment.

“It’s true then,” my father asks. He almost rises from the couch, but then decides not to. I smirk; I’m at least half a foot taller than he is. He can’t tower over me like he could when I was a child.

“Is that a problem?”

“Jared,” my father sighs and suddenly I explode.

“Don’t you fucking ‘Jared’ me. You act like your accepting and kind and a good human being to everyone. But god forbid it’s _your_ son. God forbid Gerald Padalecki is the father of a fag. Well, fuck you. I didn’t ask to be different dad, but I’m not sorry that I am.”

“This has _nothing_ to do with—“

“But doesn’t it though?”

“No!” My father insists, finally standing up. “This is not about that fact that he’s a man. That you’re...”

I scoff but I sort of want to cry. “You can’t even say it.”

“Gay!” He says it loudly to emphasize his point. “But that boy is a prostitute and the whole world knows it. I mean, for Christ’s sake Jared, he was charged with _murder_.”

“He was found innocent!”

“Found,” my father says, pointing, “You didn’t say he was innocent. You said he was _found_ innocent, which means you think he did it. You think he killed that man.”

“I’m not discussing this with you. I can date whomever I please.”

“You can’t expect us to be okay with you dating a killer.”

I don’t know what to say to that.

“Jared,” my mother’s soft voice whispers, “Is it true? Did Jensen…”

It’s not fair of me to be upset with her for think it’s true when it is, but I can’t help the way my voice cracks when I say, “Mom?” I can’t hold back the horrified tone lacing my words like a crimson ribbon making it’s way through the holes punched in a piece of paper.

The room floods with silence, and I look at them, and they look at me. And I can’t breathe. So I run out of the house and I climb into my car and I drive without knowing where I intend to go.

It is of little surprise that I arrive at Jensen’s. It is of far more surprise that there is a very expensive Mercedes in the driveway next to his car. It is parked sloppily, practically sideways and it forces me to park on the road.

I jog up the driveway, wiping away any tears that might’ve fallen out of my eyes. I don’t want to cry in front of Kenzie, or whatever guest Jensen has over at the moment. Perhaps his lawyer.

There is a chance that Mac is already asleep so I make certain to be quiet as I turn the doorknob. There are voices coming from the family room and the sound of a screaming child.

I peek around the corner and suck in a breath.

It is Michael Roche’s girlfriend. She wears ratty jeans and a white tank top. She is holding a black gun and pointing it at Jensen who is talking lowly to her, trying to get her to calm down as she shouts slurred obscenities at him.

Mackenzie is sitting in her playpen, sobbing and knocking one of her Barbie dolls against the floor.

“You killed him.” The woman, whatever her name is, insists.

“No, I didn’t. You were at the trial. You heard what my mother said.”

“No, it was you, I know it was you!”

The woman is clearly intoxicated, swaying even though she’s standing still. The shitty parking job now makes more sense.

Jensen’s eyes catch mine. Relief flits across his face. It vanishes when she cocks the gun.

I run towards her and I shove her just as she pulls the trigger. A shot echoes through the room and blood splatters on the wall.


	57. Chapter 57

“I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite.” – Shane Koyczan

_Jensen_

_It’s something like walking a tightrope, giving up, and then jumping off. And you’re falling and falling and waiting for the ground to rise up and meet you. And thunder to crackle and the world to flash bright white and then for there to be nothing._

_But that’s not what happens._

_Instead you crash into water and ice fills your lungs. The black ocean waves toss you around and drag you under, stealing your air and silencing your screams._

_And the only thing you can do is keep swimming. Keep swimming until your arms and legs fall off and sink into the murky depths. Keep swimming until you’re so tired you can’t keep your head above water._

_Keep swimming until you have nothing to swim for._

***

There are cuts in this world that never stop bleeding.

There are lacerations that never turn into scars. They just ooze puss and blood indefinitely until there is nothing left pumping through your veins.

I was a person. A son. A boyfriend. A big brother. A friend.

Now I am a ghost.

 

I watch the forensics people scrape the brain matter off of the wall. Bits of chipped yellow paint slide into the bag with it. A murderer is taken away in handcuffs.

I do not cry.

 

I’m staying at a hotel. My home is considered a crime scene, full of yellow tape and other ghosts: ghosts that are actually dead.

I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. A golf game is playing on the television. I think about the fact that I cannot afford this hotel. I wonder when I started thinking of that tiny old house with the ugly yellow wall paint as a home.

I do not cry.

 

The coffin is so tiny. It looks like it should belong to a doll. The inside is white and filled with lace. The outside is mahogany. It looks pretty. I think she would’ve liked it. I hope so, at least.

I close my eyes and imagine her blonde strands spread out like a fan over the silky white fabric; perhaps she is clutching a Barbie doll. Her favorite one, the one she chopped all the hair off of in her attempt to give it a ‘haircut’.

The priest or reverend or whatever assures me that she’s gone to a better place. I think I might actually believe him—not because I believe in god or heaven but because anywhere is better than here.

We make arrangements. The funeral will be four days from now. Open casket.

Jared stands behind where I’m seated and squeezes my shoulder. He is unusually silent until the priest/reverend/I-could-give-a-fuck exits and we are left alone in a room filled with beautiful stain glass windows, unlit candles, and not much else.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he drops to his knees in front of me, takes one of my hands into both of his. There are tears in his eyes. I can feel him touching me but he seems so far away. Everything is just a little bit out of focus.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t yours either.”

I do not cry.

 

My mother sits on the other side of the glass wall. Her eyes are red, the ugly-colored phone held to her ear.

It is surreal, being on the other side of one of these exchanges.

“Did she suffer?” Her hands are shaking, fingers drumming with a want that feels more like a need. A want I’m all too familiar with.

“It was instant.”

“Yes, but did she suffer?”

My mother looks crazed, her blue eyes wide and wild. Maybe I’d be concerned if I wasn’t so goddamn tired all the time. People are talking all around me. Cars zip by outside. I want it all to stop.

“She was shot in the head. Of course she suffered.”

My mother begins to sob, her shoulders shaking as she buries her head in her hands. “My baby. My baby girl.” After a few moments she rises from her seat, lifts the chair she’d been sitting on up off the ground and throws it against the glass.

I flinch, expecting it to shatter, but instead the chair practically bounces off. Guards swarm the room. They stick a needle into my mother’s neck and she crumples to the ground like Mackenzie’s pink baby blanket, that is stained white in places from being washed so many times, would.

I leave a message with one of the guards before I leave, something to tell my mother when she wakes up. She will be allowed to attend and speak at her daughter’s funeral if she chooses but it must be with an armed escort.

I drive back to hotel in silence.

I do not cry.

 

The day of the funeral is beautiful. And the ceremony itself is as well. I’ve spent thousands of dollars making certain of that, practically all of my savings. I could see the concern in Jared’s eyes when I signed the bills.

“But what about the future, Jen?” He’s asked so low he thought I couldn’t hear.

I had just barely refrained from laughing.

Rows of white chairs line the graveyard. They are filled with people. Some I know. Some I don’t. They all feel like strangers. Nicki Aycox is there. So is my mother, flanked by two police officers. Jared and his parents (He’s since told me that they had a fight the night my sister died, but they seem to have reconciled enough to attend her funeral together. Tragedy will do that, I suppose.) Even Chad Lindberg has come, offering his sympathies for a little girl he met but once. I smile thankfully at him.

Mackenzie looks like a little princess, her eyelashes long and her lids dusted in gold. Whoever did her makeup did a superb job of covering up the bullet hole, now it is only a small indent in her forehead that the mid-afternoon sunlight dips into as it shines down.

I try not to think too much about how the tiny coffin will be filled with bones and rotting flesh in only a few weeks. Death is such an ugly thing.

I somehow managed to stomach going into the house and grabbing that doll of hers yesterday. I tuck it between her tiny little hands. I am not usually a sentimental person but looking at her like that…I have to take a few deep breaths until it doesn’t feel like I’m holding up the sky anymore.

We all take our seats. The priest (I’m pretty certain it’s a priest) says a few words about life and death and innocence and youth that mostly sounds like bullshit to me but has some of the other mourners in tears, my mother included.

We pretend to pray for a bit and then my mother makes her way up toward where the priest stands. I shift uncomfortably; my suit suddenly feels too tight.

My mother looks like a woman who has been beaten down by life. Sympathy resides in the eyes of all who stare at her, all except for me. The only sympathy I feel is for my sister.

I expect to get bored during her speech, but I don’t. She talks about a time in my sister’s life that I wasn’t there for and so I do my best to soak in every detail. These words are the closest thing I have to making new memories of my sister.

My mother talks about a long strenuous pregnancy. About a child who wouldn’t stop kicking the entire time. About a forty-six hour labor and countless nights spent rocking Kenzie to sleep. She tells of a beautiful little girl whose curiosity was never quenched and she tells of how amazing it was that someone so beautiful could come from two ugly people.

And then she says the words that stop my heart, “And now, her big brother, Jensen, would like to say a few words.”

No. No I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t like to say anything at all. I made that very clear to my mother, to the priest to everyone during the planning of all this. _I did not want to say a word_. And yet, here I was, feeling Jared nudge me forward, up out of my seat.

I don’t remember the walk to the casket but suddenly I’m staring at about thirty pairs of eyes that are staring straight back.

And I have no fucking clue what to say.

I try to think of anything, anything at all. Any dumb cliché. Any kind words about my sister. But the English language seems to have deserted me.

My eyes meet my mother’s and I say the only three words that come to mind. “I hate you,” I tell her. “I hated you for so long. Ever since I was thirteen years old. I hated that you made me feel like drugs were more important than me.” My eyes flick to Jared. “And I hate that I’ve made other people feel that way. So I ran away and when I saw you again I found out that you had another kid. That you got clean for _her_. That she was _worth it,_ worth more than me. And I wanted to fucking hate her too! But I couldn’t. Because you were right. She was better than me. So much better, you can’t even imagine.” I’m talking to everyone now. Almost screaming at them. “And I wish it’d been me, you have no idea how much I wish that. But it wasn’t, and now it can’t be, and I’m so fucking sorry.”

I lean down and give my sister one last kiss on the forehead, just to the side of the bullet hold. Despite how hot the day is her skin feels cold and clammy. Like it’s only being warmed from the outside now.

I whisper, “I’m sorry,” again and then I race through the graveyard and climb into my car. Jared calls my name but I don’t turn around. I don’t turn around at all as I drive away.

And then I do cry. Like a fucking baby.

 

In the fading sunlight I walk into an ally. Gravel crunches under my feet as I move toward the man in the dirty trench coat.

I hand him two hundred dollar bills.

He hands me my sanity.

 

The crime scene tape is gone. The house is quiet, but for the dripping of the faucet.

_Plink-Plink-Plink_

Her toys are everywhere. I never noticed just how many places my sister has left empty before now.

I use one of my old belts to tie up my arm and while I wait for the vein to bulge I look around in the utter darkness. A car is on the road outside, I can hear it getting closer.

I don’t know exactly how he found me, though I suppose there are only so many places I would be. He slams open the door just as the tip of the needle slides into my skin.

“What the fuck, Jen. I’ve been looking for you for hours. What—“ He cuts off when he sees me

sees what I’m doing

sees what I am.

“Jen?” He asks.

“Go away Jared.” My hands are shaking and I’m worried if I don’t do it soon I’ll slip and cut myself, but I don’t want to do this in front of him I really don’t.

He shakes his head. It’s hard to see in the dark but I think he’s crying. I tighten my grip on the needle; worried he might lunge for it, try and take it away.

“Jen don’t do this?”

“You’ll be okay,” I assure him.

“Not for me, you stubborn asshole,” he yells.

I close my eyes and try to will away the pain. It doesn’t work. There is no thread strong enough to sew me back together again. Better he know that sooner rather than later.

“For who then?” I ask. “Kenzie’s dead.” I choke on the words. “My sister’s dead.

“Even when she wasn’t,” he sighs in frustration. “Jensen, you’ve been living for other people and it’s _killing_ you.”

I’m much too tired to try and figure out what that means.

“Go away.”

“No.”

He steps towards me and sits down, cross-legged. We stare at each other, our knees nearly touching. I’m still wearing the suit from the funeral. He wears faded jeans and an old _Doctor Who_ tee shirt. Again, I expect him to make a grab at the syringe. But he doesn’t.

“Fucking leave!” I scream.

“No!” he nods toward the hand holding the syringe. “Is that what you really want, Jensen?” I nod, holding his stare. “Prove it.”

It sounds like a challenge, but I can see it for what it really is: a choice. And this time it isn’t between the drugs and Jared, it’s choosing between the drugs and myself.

And I’m so fucking tired I don’t think that I could stand up. And my shaking hand finds the syringe, and I mean to push down, I really think I do.

Except I don’t.

My palm grips the glass so hard it shatters. I scream in the darkness. Clear liquid drips down my fingers and onto the ground, soaking into the carpet. Glass digs into my hand, slicing open my skin. Jared wraps his arms around me and pulls me to him.

 

There are cuts in this world that never stop bleeding.

But there are things in this world worth bleeding for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it folks! This is the end.
> 
> I want to say thank you to any of the real-life actors whose names and faces I have used for my characters. I want to say thank you to Shane Koyczan for writing such beautiful quotable poems. And I'd like to say thank you to everyone who read this long thing, especially those of you who commented.
> 
> I'd also like to say sorry, because some pretty horrible things happened in this story. So I'm sorry for almost killing pretty much every character and I'm sorry, so sorry, for actually killing Kenzie. But it had to be done.
> 
> Please tell me what you think of the story, of it's ending. I enjoy praises and I enjoy criticism (well, maybe not 'enjoy' but I benefit from it so it is much appreciated).
> 
> I hope you enjoyed your 80,000 word visit to the little world I made up in my mind :)


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